So Kere con\e 

Beil\£> a ka?k. dC\ 

hy ELBERT ij 

atv attempt to 1 
ideals £?r tket 
eke •vws>merv, • 
folT life ^V livJl 



of congress] 
" oies Bee 
j J1908 

CWS8 A *Xc, NO. 



T* 






Copyright 1907 

by 

Elbert Hubbard 



ro2i 



CO 



ry 



If I had but two loaves of bread I 
would sell one of them and buy 
White Hyacinths to feed my soul. 




White Hyacinths 

COMMON question this, 
"Would you care to live 
your life over again ?" &&i> 
Not only is it a common 
question, but a foolish one, 
since we were sent into life 
jj without our permission, & 
are being sent out of it against our will, and 
the option of a return ticket is not ours ,£&» 
But if urged to reply I would say with Ben- 
jamin Franklin, "Yes, provided, of course, 
that you allow me the author's privilege of 
correcting the second edition. " If, however, 
this is denied, I will still say, "Yes," and 
say it so quickly it will give you vertigo ^. 
In reading the Journal of John Wesley the 
other day, I ran across this item written in 
the author's eighty-fifth year, "In all of my 
life I have never had a period of depression 
nor unhappiness that lasted more than half 
an hour." I can truthfully say the same. 
One thing even Omnipotence cannot do, 
and that is to make that which once occurred 
never to have been. THE PAST IS MINE 




HITE HYACINTHS 



I HAT does life mean to me? 
Everything ! Because I have 
everything with which to 
enjoy life. 

I own a beautiful home, 
well furnished, and this J^- 
tj home is not decorated with 
a mortgage. 

I have youth — I am only fifty — and as in 
degree the public is willing to lend me its 
large furry ear, I have prospects. 
I have a library of five thousand volumes to 
read; and besides, I have a little case of a 
hundred books to love, bound in full levant, 
hand-tooled r$*k. 

I have four paid-up Life Insurance Policies 
in standard companies; a little balance in 
the Savings Bank; I owe no man, and my 
income is ample for all my wants. 
Then besides I have a saddle-horse with 
a pedigree like unto that of a Daughter 
of the Revolution; a Howard watch, and 
a fur-lined overcoat &&*> So there now, 

WHY SHOULD N'T I ENJOY LIFE? 

10 



W H I T E HYAC I N \ H ft 




ANTICIPATE your an- 
swer, which is, that a man 
may have all of these things 
enumerated and also have 
indigestion and chronic ftfc 
Bright' s disease, so that the 
digger in the ditch, than he, 
is happier far. Your point is well taken, and 
so I will gently explain that if I have any 
aches or pains I am not aware of them t&0* 
I have never used tobacco, nor spirituous 
liquors, nor have I contracted the chloral, 
cocaine, bromide or morphine habit, never 
having invested a dollar in medicine, pa- 
tented, proprietary, nor prescribed. In fact 
I have never had occasion to consult a phy- 
sician. I have good eyesight, sound teeth, a 
perfect digestion, and God grants to me His 
great gift of sleep. Q And again you say, very 
well, but you yourself have said, * * Expression 
is necessary to life," and that the man who 
has everything is to be pitied, since he has 
nothing to work for, and that to have every- 
thing is to lose all, for life lies in the struggle. 

11 



WHITE HYACINTHS 




LL the points are well made. 
But I have work to do — 
compelling work — that I 
cannot delegate to others. 
•Sj^ This prevents incipient 
smugosity & introspection. 
^ For more than twelve years 
I have written the copy for two monthly 
magazines &8l During that time no issue of 
either magazine has been skipped. The com- 
bined paid-in-advance circulation of these 
periodicals is over two hundred thousand 
copies each issue, giving me an audience, 
counting at the conservative rate of three 
readers to a magazine, of over half a million 
souls r£&> 

Here is a responsibility that may well sober 
any man, and which would subdue him, 
actually, if he stopped to contemplate it & 
The success of Blondin in crossing Niagara 
Gorge on a wire, with a man on his back, 
hinged on his not stopping to think it over. 
Cf When I write I never consider what will 

be done with the matter, how it will be 
12 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

liked, and who will read it. I just write for 
myself ^ And the most captious, relentless 
critic I have is myself. When I write well, 
as I occasionally do, I am filled with a rap- 
turous, intoxicating joy. No pleasure in life 
compares with the joy of creation — catching 
in the Cadmean mesh a new thought — put- 
ting salt on the tail of an idea. And a certain 
critic has said that I can catch more ideas 
with less salt than any man in America *&&*> 
I am not sure whether the man was speak- 
ing ironically or in compliment, but since 
the remark has been bruited abroad, it has 
struck me as being fairly good, and so I here 
repeat it, for I am making no special attempt 
in this article and elsewhere, to conceal the 
fact that I am still on earth. 
One book I wrote has attained a sale of over 
a hundred thousand copies, although selling 
at the unpopular price of two dollars a vol- 
ume. And one article I wrote and published 
in one of the magazines, to which I have 
just referred, has been translated into eleven 
languages & been reprinted over twenty-four 

13 



WHITE H A N T H 

million times, attaining a wider circulation, 

I believe, than any article or book has ever 

attained in the same length of time. 

In saying these things I fully realize that no 

man is ever in such danger of being 

elected an honorary member 

of the Ananias Club as 

he who states the 

simple truth 




14 




I T E HYACINTHS 

N order to write well you 
require respite and rest in 
change. Ideas come to one 
on the mountains, while 
tramping the fields, at the 
wood-pile. When you are 
in the best condition is the 
time to do nothing, for at such a time, if 
ever, the divine current surges through you. 
If we could only find the cosmic switchboard 
when we want to think, how delightful it 
would be to simply turn on the current! 
But no, all we can do is to walk, ride horse- 
back, dig in the garden, placing ourselves in 
receptive mood and from the Unknown the 
ideas come. Then to use them is a matter of 
the workroom. 

And so to keep my think-apparatus in good 
working order I dilute the day with much 
manual work — which is only another word 
for play &&:> 

Big mental work is done in heats. Between 
these heats are intervals of delightful stu- 
pidity. To cultivate his dull moments is the 

15 



mark of wisdom for every thought-juggler 
who aspires to keep three balls in the air at: 
one time. In the course of each year I give 
about a hundred lectures. , j 

^^ Public speaking, if carried on with ai 
moderation, is a valuable form of mental! 
excitation. Ill health comes from too much 
excitement, or not enough. Platform work 
keeps your mental pores open and tends to i 
correct faulty elimination of mental dross. 
<{ To stand before an audience of a thousand 
people for two hours with no manuscript, 
and only your tongue and brain to save you 
from the ruin that may engulf you any in- 
stant, & which many in your audience hope 
will engulf you, requires a goodly modicum 
of concentration. 

I have seen the giving way of a collar button 
in an impassioned moment, cross-buttock 
a Baptist preacher. I am always prepared 
for accidents in oratory, such say, as a 
harmless necessary cat coming on the stage 
without her cue. In public speaking one 
shakes the brush piles of thought and starts 

16 



W H I M H Y A C I I H S 

a deal more game than he runs down at the 
time, and this game which he follows up 
at his leisure, and the stimulus of success in 
having stayed the limit, makes for mental 
growth &*&> 

But besides writing and public speaking, I 
have something to do with a semi-commu- 
nistic corporation called The Roycrofters, 
employing upwards of rive hundred people. 
The work of The Roycrofters is divided 
into departments as follows: a farm, bank, 
hotel, printing plant, bookbindery, furniture 
factory and blacksmith shop. 
The workers in these various departments 
are mostly people of moderate experience, 
and therefore more or less superintendence 
is demanded. Eternal vigilance is not only 
the price of liberty but of success in business, 
and knowing this I keep in touch with all 
departments of the work. So far, we have 
always been able to meet our pay roll. All 
of the top-notchers in the Roycroft Shops 
have been evolved there, so it will be seen 

that we aim to make something besides 

17 



books. In fact we have a brass band, an art 

gallery, a reading room, a library, and we 

have lectures, classes or concerts every night 

in the week. Some of these classes I teach, 

and usually I speak in the Roycroft Chapel 

twice a week on current topics. 

These things are here explained to make 

clear the point that I have no time for ennui 

or brooding over troubles past or those to 

come. Even this article is written on bi- 

product time, on board a railroad train, 

going to meet a lecture engagement, seated 

with a strange fat man who talks to me, 

as I write, about the weather, news 

from nowhere, and his most 

wonderful collection of steins. 




z8 






TF HYAC NTF1 

LL of which, I hear you 
say, is very interesting, but 
somewhat irrelevant and 
inconsequential since one 
may have all of the things 
just named, and also hold 
the just balance between 
activity and rest, concentration and relaxa- 
tion, which we call health, and yet his life 
be faulty, incomplete, a failure for lack of 
one thing — LOVE. 
Your point is well made. 
When Charles Kingsley was asked to name 
the secret of his success he replied, " I had 
a friend." 

If asked the same question I would give 
the same answer. 

I might also explain that my friend is a 
woman ^S£> 

This woman is my wife, legally and other- 
wise >^&> 

She is also my comrade, my companion, 
my chum, my business partner. 
There has long been a suspicion that when 

i9 



WHIT HYACINTHS 

God said, "I will make a helpmeet for 
man, ' ' the remark was a subtle bit of sarcasm. 
<( However, the woman of whom I am 
speaking proves what God can do when 
He concentrates on His work. 
My wife is my helpmeet, and I am hers. 
Q I do not support her, rather, she supports 
me. All I have is hers — not only do I trust 
her with my heart, but with my pocket- 
book. And what I here write is not a tomb- 
stone testimonial, weighed with a granitic 
sense of loss, but a simple tribute of truth 
to a woman who is yet on earth in full 
possession of her powers, her star still in 
the ascendant. 

I know the great women of history. I know 
the qualities that go to make up, not only 
the superior person but the one sublimely 
great. Humanity is the raw stock with 
which I work. 

I know how Sappho loved and sang, and 
Aspasia inspired Pericles to think and act, 
and Cleopatra was wooed by two Emperors 

of Rome, and how Theodora suggested the 
20 



I NTHS 

Justinian code and had the last word in its 
compilation. I know Madam De Stael, Sarah 
Wedgwood, George Eliot, Susanna Wesley, 
Elizabeth Barrett. I know them all, for I 
can read, and I have lived, and I have 
imagination. 

And knowing the great women of the 
world, and having analyzed their characters 
and characteristics, I still believe that Alice 
Hubbard, in way of mental reach, sanity, 
sympathy and all-round ability, out-classes 
any woman of history, ancient or modern, 
mentally, morally and spiritually. To make 
a better woman than Alice Hubbard one 
would have to take the talents and graces of 
many great women and omit their faults. If 
she is a departure in some minor respects 
from a perfect standard it is probably be- 
cause she lives in a faulty world, with a 
faulty man, and deals with faulty folks, a few 
of whom, doubtless, will peruse this article. 



21 



\AT tJ T T 17 n V 



f 1 M T H s 




IGHT here, of course I hear 
you say, but love is blind, 
or at least myopic, and 
every man who ever loved, 
says what you are saying 
now. The nature of love is 
exaggeration, and to take a 
woman and clothe her with ideality, this is 
love. C[ And you speak wisely. But let me 
here explain that while the saltness of time 
in my ego has not entirely dissolved, I have 
reached a time of life when feminine society 
is not an actual necessity. I am at an age 
when libertines turn saints, and rogues be- 
come religious. However, I have never gone 
the pace, and so I am neither saint nor 
ascetic, and the eternally feminine is not 
now, and never was to me a consuming 
lure. And while the flush of impetuous 
youth, with its unreasoning genius of the 
genus, is not mine, I am not a victim of 
amor senilis, and never can be, since world 
problems, not sensations, fill my dreams 

and flood my hours. 
22 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

The youth loves his doxie in the mass; I 
analyze, formulate and reduce character to 
its constituent parts. 

And yet, I have never fully analyzed the 
mind of the woman I love, for there is 
always and forever an undissolved residuum 
of wit, reason, logic, invention and com- 
parison bubbling forth that makes associa- 
tion with her a continual delight. I have no 
more sounded the depths of her soul than I 
have my own. What she will say and what 
she will do are delightful problems; only 
this, that what she says and what she does 
will be regal, right, gracious, kindly — tem- 
pered with a lenity that has come from 
suffering, and charged with a sanity that 
has enjoyed, and which knows because 
through it plays unvexed the Divine Intel- 
ligence that rules the world and carries the 
planets in safety on their 'customed way — 
this I know. Q Perhaps the principal reason 
my wife and I get along so well together is 
because we have similar ideas as to what 
| constitutes wit. She laughs at all of my 

23 



WHITE HYACINTH 

jokes, and I do as much for her. All of our 
quarrels are papier mache, made, played, 
and performed for the gallery of our psy- 
chic selves. 

Having such a wife as this, I do not chase 
the ghosts of dead hopes through the grave- 
yard of my dreams. 
I have succeeded beyond the wildest ambi- 
tions of my youth, but I am glad to find 
that my desires outstrip my performances, 
and as fast as I climb one hill I see a summit 
beyond. So I am not satisfied, nor do I ever 
declare, "Here will I build three taber- 
nacles," but forever do I hear a voice 
which says, "Arise and get thee 
hence, for this is not thy rest." 




24 



H I T E HYACINTHS 




HO can deny that the 
mother-heart of a natural 
and free woman makes the 
controlling impulse of her 
life a prayer to bless and 
benefit, to minister and 
serve! Such is Alice Hub- 
bard — a free woman who has gained free- 
dom by giving it. But her charity is never 
maudlin. She has the courage of her lack 
of convictions, and decision enough to with- 
hold the dollar when the cause is not hers, 
and when to bestow merely means escape 
from importunity ,*? To give people that 
which they do not earn is to make them 
think less of themselves — and you. The only 
way to help people is to give them a chance 
to help themselves. 

She is the only woman I ever knew who 
realizes as a vital truth that the basic ele- 
ments for all human betterments are econo- 
mic, not mental nor spiritual. She knows 
that the benefits of preaching are problem- 
atic, and that the good the churches do is 

25 





conjectural; but that good roads are the 
first and chiefest factor in civilization. She 
knows and advocates what no college presi- 
dent in America dare advocate, that the 
money we expend for churches if invested 
in scientific forestry and good roads would 
make this world a paradise enow. She does 
not trouble herself much about Adam's fall, 
but she does thoroughly respect Macadam. 
If she ever sings, "Oh for the wings of a 
dove," it is not because she desires them 
to adorn her hat, nor as a means 
to fly away and be at rest. 




26 



H I T E HYACIN T H S 




|S a school teacher, woman 
was not deemed capable or 
acceptable until about 1 868. 
Woman's entrance into the 
business world is a very 
modern innovation. It all 
dates since the Civil War 
and was really not accepted as a fact until 
1876, the year the typewriter appeared. 
Even yet the average man keeps his wife in 
total ignorance of his financial affairs, think- 
ing that she has n't the ability to comprehend 
the intricacies of trade. 
The world was discovered in 1492; but man 
was not discovered until 1776. Before then 
man was only a worm of the dust, and the 
tradition still lingers, fostered by the sects 
that believe in the ministry of fear. 
Woman was not discovered until 1 876. Her 
existence before then was not even suspected, 
and the few men who had their suspicions 
were considered unsafe — erratic, strange 
and peculiar. In youth, when she was pink 
and twenty she was a plaything; when she 

27 



W H 1 T E HYA( 



grew old and wrinkled she was a scullion 
and a drudge. All laws were made by men, 
and in most states a woman only has yet a 
secondary claim on her child. If she is a 
married woman all the money she earns 
belongs to her husband. Woman's right to 
have her political preferences recorded is 
still denied. Orthodox churches will not 
listen to her speak, and the logic of William 
Penn that, "The Voice may come to a 
woman exactly as to a man " is smiled at 
indulgently by priests and preachers. In 
English common law she is always a minor. 
Q It does not require much reasoning to 
see that as long as a woman is treated as a 
child the tendency is that she shall be one. 
C( The success of the Bon Marche at Paris, 
not to mention Mary Elizabeth, Her Candy, 
proves what woman can do when her head 
is not in a compress, and her hands tied. 
C( Man's boldness and woman's caution 
make an admirable business combination. 
And in spite of that malicious generaliza- 
tion, pictured in print and fable, about 

28 



^B'H T Y H Y A 

woman's enterprise being limited to ex- 
ploiting the trousers of peacefully sleeping 
man, I believe that women are more honor- 
able in money matters than the male 
of the genus homo. Women cash- 
iers do not play the races, 
harken to the seductive 
ticker, nor cultivate 
the poker face. 




29 



WHITE HYACINTH 



J 

















Tji'J^m* 









LICE HUBBARD is an 

economist by nature, and 
her skill as a financier is 
founded on absolute hon- 
esty and flawless integrity. 
She has the savings bank 
habit, and next to paying 
her debts, gets a fine tang out of life by wise 
and safe investments. She knows that a sav- 
ings bank account is an anchor to win'ard, 
and that to sail fast and far your craft must 
be close hauled to weather squalls. 
In manufacturing she studies cost, knowing 
better far than most business men that de- 
terioration of property and overhead charges 
must be carefully considered, if the Referee 
in Bankruptcy would be kept at a safe dis- 
tance ^ She is a methodizer of time and 
effort, and knows the value of system, real- 
izing the absurdity of a thirty-dollar-a-week 
man doing the work of a five-dollar-a-week 
boy. She knows the proportion of truth to 
artistic jealousy in the melodious discord of 
the anvil chorus; and the foreman who 

30 



W ' T "P \ r \ C^ NT T^ IJ Q 

opposes all reforms which he himself does 
not conjure forth from his chickadee brain, 
is to her familiar. The employe who is a 
knocker by nature, who constantly shows 
a tendency to get on the greased slide that 
leads to limbo, has her pity, and she by 
many gentle and diplomatic ways tries to 
show him the danger of his position. 
With John Ruskin she says, " It 's nothing 
to give pension and cottage to the widow 
who has lost her son ; it is nothing to give 
food and medicine to the workman who 
has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman 
wasting in sickness. But it is something to 
use your time and strength to war with 
the waywardness and thoughtlessness of 
mankind ; to keep erring workmen in your 
service till you have made him an un- 
erring one, and to direct your fellow- 
merchant to the opportunity which his 
judgment would otherwise have lost.' 3 






|N my wife's mind I see my 
thoughts enlarged and re- 
flected, just as in a telescope 
we behold the stars. She is ; 
the magic mirror in which 
I see the divine. Her mind 
acts on mine, and mine 
reacts upon hers. Most certainly I am aware 
that no one else can see the same in her 
which I behold, because no one else can 
call forth her qualities, any more than any 
other woman can call forth mine & Our 
minds, separate and apart, act together as 
one, forming a complete binocular, making 
plain that which to one alone is invisible. 
Cf Now there be those, wise in this world's 
affairs, who may say, evidently this man is a 
victim of the gumwillies. Love like all other 
things has its limit. A month of close con- 
tact usually wears off the new, and captivity 
reduces the butterfly to a grub. Don't tell 
us — we know! The very intensity of a pas- I 
sion betokens its transient quality. Henry 
Finck in his great book, ' ' Passionate Love . 

32 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

and Personal Beauty," recounts the great 
loves of history, and then says, "The limit 
of the Grand Passion is two years." 
Hence I here make the explanation that I 
have known this woman for twenty years. 
I have written her over three thousand 
letters and she has written as many to me. 
Every worthy theme and sentiment I have 
expressed to the public has been first ex- 
pressed to her, or more likely, borrowed 
from her. I have seen her in almost every 
possible exigency of life : in health, success, 
and high hope; in poverty, and what the 
world calls disgrace and defeat. But here I 
should explain that disgrace is for those who 
accept disgrace, and defeat consists in ac- 
knowledging it. 

I have seen her face the robustious fury of 
an attorney weighing three hundred pounds, 
and reduce him to pork cracklings by her 
poise, quiet persistence and the righteous- 
ness of her cause. 

She is at home with children, the old, the 
decrepit, the sick, the lonely, the unfor- 

33 





tunate, the vicious, the stupid, the insane. 
She puts people at their ease; she is one 
with them, but not necessarily of them. She 
recognizes the divinity in all of God's crea- 
tures, even the lowliest, and those who wear 
prison stripes are to her akin, all this with- 
out condoning the offense. She respects the 
sinner, but not the sin. Wherever she goes 
her spirit carries with it the message, * 'Peace, 
be still!" With the noble, the titled, the 
famous she is equally at home. 
I have seen her before an audience of highly 
critical, intellectual and aristocratic people, 
stating her cause with that same gentle, 
considerate courtesy and clearness that so 
becomes her. 

The strongest feature of her nature is her 
humanitarianism, and this springs from her 
unselfish heart and her wide-reaching im- I 
agination. And imagination is only sympathy 
illumined by love and ballasted with brains. 
C{ She knows and has performed every item 
of toil in the ceaseless round of woman's 
drudgery on the farm ; she realizes the stress 

34 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

and strain of overworked and tired mothers ; 
the responsibility of caring for sick and 
H peevish children, the cooking, sewing, 
scrubbing, washing, care of vegetables and 
milk, the old black dress that does duty on 
Sunday with the bonnet that carries a faded 
flower in summer and its frayed ostrich 
feather in winter; the life of men who 
breakfast by lamplight and go to work in 
winter woods ere dawn appears, coming 
home at dark, with chores yet to do, ere 
supper and bed are earned; the children 
who follow frozen country roads to school, 
and eat at noon their luncheon of corn bread 
and molasses and salt pork and count it good, 
being filled with eager joy to slide down hill 
ere the bell rings for the study of McGuf- 
fey's Reader; the slim, slender girl, mayhap 
with stocking down, who herds turkeys on 
the upland farm in the cool October dew, 
that she may get money to go to the distant 
High School or the coveted " Normal,' ' and 
who finally receives the longed for teacher's 
certificate and earns money to help satisfy 

35 





the hungry mortgage on the farm; the 
young women who work in box factories 
under the menacing eye of the boss; the 
tired frayed-out heedless clerks ; the smartly 
dressed cashiers; the men who drive horses 
or work with pick, adze, maul and ax; the 
pilots who creep their crafts through fog 
along rocky coasts, or in mid-ocean take the 
temperature of the water, locating icebergs; 
the woman who flees the world in order to 
be " good; " the business man mousing over 
his accounts, fearing to compare assets and 
liabilities, hoping for a turn in the tide ; the 
flush of the orator, the joy of the author, 
the deep, silent pleasure of the scientist who 
finds a new species; the serene confidence 
of the railroad president who knows his de- 
partments are all well manned ; the moment 
of nightmare and doubt when the general 
manager holds his breath and listens for the 
rumble of his "Limited," speeding with 
precious treasure through the all-enfolding 
night; the fever of unrest that comes to the 
captain of the man-o-war the night before 

36 





the battle ; the soldiers in the trenches, bliss- 
fully ignorant, needlessly brutal in their at- 
tempts to be brave as they peer at the enemy's 
camp fires on the distant hills; the joyless, 
yellow-eyed children who toil in the mills 
and forget how to play; boys home from 
school; girls in cap and gown graduating 
at Wellesley or Vassar; city children from 
the slums in the country for the first time, 
begging permission to pick dandelions and 
daisies; women discarded by society and 
relatives for faults — or virtues; wives whose 
hearts are stamped upon by drunken hus- 
bands; men who are crazed through the 
vanity of wives who walk the border land of 
folly; the hesitating, doubting, fearing, sick, 
through lack of incentive — work; to all 
these is she sister, and still the joy in work 
well done, the calm of honesty, the sense of 
power through facing unpleasant tasks, the 
sweet taste of food earned by honest effort, 
the absolution that comes through follow- 
ing one's highest ideals, the self-sufficient 
purpose and firm resolve to do still better 

37 



I 

work tomorrow through having done good 
work today — all these are hers. 
She is patient under censure, just or unjust; 
and unresentful toward hypocrisy, pretence, 
and stupidity. Of course she recognizes that 
certain people are not hers, and these she 
neither avoids nor seeks to please or placate. 
Some there be, who have called to her in- 
sultingly upon the public street, and to sun- 
dry and various of these she has given work 
and taught them with a love and patience 
almost past belief. 

She has the sublime ability to forget the 
wrongs that have been visited upon her, 
the faults of her friends, and the good deeds 
she has done. 

She knows history from its glimmering 
dawn in Egypt down to the present time. 
The reformers, thinkers, martyrs, who have 
stood forth and spoken what they thought 
was truth, and died that we might live, are 
to her familiar friends. 
She knows the poets, writers, sculptors, 
musicians, painters, inventors, architects, 

38 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

engineers of all time. And those who can 
build a bridge or make good roads are to 
her more worthy of recognition than those 
who preach. 

She believes in the rights of dumb animals, 
of children and especially women >&^> She 
knows that woman can never be free until 
she owns herself, and is economically free. 
£Jg> To this end she believes that a woman 
should be allowed to do anything which she 
can do well, and that when she does a man's 
work she should receive a man's wage. 
To those who disagree with her she is ever 
tolerant; in her opinions she is not dog- 
matic, realizing that truth is only a point 
of view, and even at the last, people should 
have the right to be wrong, so long as they 
give this right to others. 
She does not mix in quarrels, has none of 
her own, nor is she quick to take sides in 
argument and wordy warfare. 
She keeps out of cliques, invites no secrets 
and has none herself, respects the mood of 
those she is with, and when she does not 

39 





know what to say, says nothing, and in 
times of doubt minds her own business ^@^> 
Q Her seeming indifference, however, does 
not spring from a lack of sympathy, for 
nothing that is human is alien to her. On a 
railroad train at night she always thinks of 
two persons — the engineer, with one hand 
on the throttle and the other on the air 
brake, looking out down the two glittering 
streaks of steel that stretch away into the 
blackness of the night, and the other man 
she considers is the one a hundred miles or 
so away, with shade over his eyes, crouch- 
ing over a telegraph key. 
At the hotels she thinks of those who wash 
dishes, and scrub and clean windows, and 
toward all servants she is gentle in her de- 
mands and grateful for services. 
She wins by abnegation and yet never re- 
nounces anything $? She has the faith that 
gives all, and therefore receives all. 
She has proved herself an ideal mother, not 
only in every physical function, but in that 
all-brooding tenderness and loving service 

40 






which is contained in the word Mother. 
She, of all mothers, realizes that the mother 
is the true teacher: that all good teachers 
are really spiritual mothers. She knows that 
not only does the mother teach by precept, 
but by every action, thought and at- 
tribute of her character. Scolding 
mothers have impatient babies 
and educated parents have 
educated children. - 




41 



W H I T E I NTHS 






HAT supreme tragedy of 
motherhood, that the best 
mothers are constantly 
training their children to 
live without them, is fully 
appreciated and understood 
by Alice Hubbard. 
To be a good teacher requires something 
besides knowledge. Character counts more 
than a memory for facts. And as the great 
physician benefits his patients more through 
his presence than by his medicines, so does 
the superior teacher leave her impress upon 
her pupils more through her moral qualities 
than her precepts. 

Franz Liszt did not teach at all, he just 
filled his pupils with a great, welling ambi- 
tion to do, and be, and become. 
I believe it was Goethe who said that great 
teachers really do not teach us anything — in 
their presence we become different people. 
<J Those who are admitted into the close 
presence of Alice Hubbard are transformed 
into different people. This is especially true 

42 



W H I T K HY\( 



of budding youth — boys and girls from 
fourteen to eighteen. For them she has a 
peculiar and potent charm — her vivacity, 
her animation, her sympathy, her knowl- 
edge of flowers, plants, trees, birds and 
animals delights them. Then she knows the 
heroes of history, and all of the literature of 
story and romance is to her familiar. If her 
pupils wish to talk, she lets them — for to her 
listening is a fine art. Her mental attitude 
brings out the best in each, so in her pres- 
ence the boor becomes gentle, and the loud 
and coarse moderate their voices and are on 
their good behavior. She carries with her 
an aura in which vulgarity cannot thrive 
nor pretense flourish. She has dignity with- 
out prudery, pedantry, or priggishness »^&> 
She has the happy faculty of putting people 
at their ease and making them pleased with 
themselves, so with her they are wise be- 
yond their wont and gracious beyond their 
'customed habit. 

In a room full of people she is not apt to 
be seen, nor to speak, but if she chooses, she 

43 





keys the conversation, dictates the theme, 
arouses genial animation, and by her pres- 
ence and the gentle, finely modulated quality 
of her voice, the indifferent and the 
mediocre subside and fade away. 




44 






WHITE HYACINTHS 









W/wK * 




.T" m *T/J^^^ *»• 


l^/^ c ~'T T*— ^^^ 



LICE HUBBARD has the 

bodily qualities of grace, 
lightness, ease and manual 
skill, and the crown of her 
head obeys the law of levi- 
tation ^ She imparts joy, 
never heaviness or weari- 
ness >#gfc> Her raiment is always neat and 
becoming, not expressed in fancy nor of a 
kind or quality to beckon or bid for atten- 
tion £• In fact, very few people can ever 
remember the exact color of her attire ; all 
that they can recall is that she was sweetly 
gracious, considerate and dignified in all of 
her words and manner. 
She wins without trying to win, and if she 
pleases, as she always does, it is without 
apparent effort. 

In moral qualities she has a steadfastness in 
the right; a sharp distinction as to meum 
et tuum; a persistence in completing the 
task begun ; the habit of being on time and 
keeping her word, even with servants and 
children and those who cannot enforce their 

45 





claims; an absence of all exaggeration, withi 
no vestige of boasting as to what she hass 
done or intends to do — all of which sets hen 
apart as one superior, refined and unselfishi 
beyond the actual as we find it, excepting ini 
the ideals of the masters in imaginative* 
literature. 

In mental qualities she appreciates the work. 
of the great statesmen, creators, inventors,, 
reformers, scientists, and all those who live 
again in minds made better. 
Dozens of times I have heard her refer to 
the unresentful qualities of Charles Darwin, 
and tell of how he, as a scientist, was 
ashamed of himself in once jumping to a 
conclusion by saying, " It must be this, for 
if it is not, what is it ?' ' 
Herbert Spencer's monograph on Educa- 
tion is to her a text book. Max Muller's 
Memories is her favorite love story, and 
Emerson's Essays are always to her a sweet 
solace and rest. She admires Browning, but 
neither dotes nor feeds on any poet — life is 
her theme, and to live rightly and well, 

46 



w 

without shame, regrets, compromises, ex- 
planations, apologies or complaints, is to 
her the finest of the fine arts. 
So these then are the qualities that mark 
Alice Hubbard as the teacher with very 
few peers and no superiors. 
She holds all ties lightly, never clutching 
even friendship, — growing rich by giving ^ 
She is an economist and a financier, making 
a dollar go farther without squeezing it, 
than any man or woman I ever saw *& She 
buys what she needs, and has the strength 
not to buy what she does not need. She 
never spends money until she gets it, and 
avoids debt as she would disease. She is a 
model housekeeper and her ability to man- 
age people and serve the public is shown in 
the fact that the Roycroft Inn, of which 
she is sole manager, made a profit the past 
year of a little over some thousand dollars. 
To direct and train the "help," (at times 
a somewhat ironical term), does not even 
supply her a topic for conversation ^ She 
never complains of the stupidity of others, 

47 



WHITE HYAC'INTK 



knowing that such complaint is in itself ai 
form of concrete stupidity. 
^However, the management of the hotel 1 
is to her only incidental, for she is Vice-- 
President of the Roycroft Corporation, and 
General Superintendent of all the work. She 5 
hires all employes and has the exclusive 
power to discharge, fixing all salaries. 
She also teaches, gives lectures and writes 
at least one book a year. 
Assuming that one hundred is the perfect 
standard, a judicial rating would place Alice 
Hubbard somewhere between ninety and! 
ninety-nine in the following: As a mother, 
housekeeper, economist, methodizer, diplo- 
mat, financier, orator, writer, reformer, in- 
ventor, humanitarian, teacher, philosopher. 
C( Tammas the Techy said, " We must be : 
patient with the fools." ^g&> But he never 
was. She is. And I myself have ever prayed, 
" For this, Good Lord, make us duly thank- 
ful." She has an abiding faith in Nemesis, 
and never for an instant considers it her 

4 

duty to transform herself into a section of 

48 



the day of judgment *^^» She believes that 
people are punished by their sins — not for 
them &*&> 

In her nature there is a singular absence of 
jealousy, whim, and prejudice ^ She can 
hear her enemies praised without resent- 
ment, and for those in competition with 
her, if such there be, she has good will at 
the best and indifference at the worst. These 
things are only possible in a very self-cen- 
tered character, one tenoned and mortised 
in granite, with an abiding faith in the 
justice and righteousness of the Eternal In- 
telligence in which we are bathed. 
s^^.She has the hospitable mind and the 
receptive heart. She is alert for new truth 
and new views of life, and is ever ready 
to throw away a good idea for a better one. 
She realizes the necessity of moderation in 
eating, of regular sleep, of fresh air, and 
regular daily exercise in the open. And not 
only does she realize their necessity, but 
she has the will to live her philosophy, not 
being content to merely think and preach it. 

49 



WH TE HYACINTHS 

Physically she is strong as a rope of silk; 
she can outride and outwalk most athletic 
men, although her form is slender and 
slight. Those who regard bulk and beauty 
as synonymous never turn and look at her 
in the public streets. In countenance she is as 
plain as was Julius Caesar, and to his busts 
she bears a striking resemblance in the 
features of nose, mouth, chin and eyes. 
In the moral qualities of patience, poise and 
persistence she is certainly Caesarian, and 
in these she outranks any woman I have 
been able to resurrect from the dusty tomes 
of days gone by. 

This, then, is my one close companion, my 
confidante, my friend, my wife; and my 
relation with her will be my sole passport 
to Paradise, if there is one beyond this life. 
Q I married a rich woman — one rich in 
love, loyalty, gentleness, insight, gratitude, 
appreciation. One who caused me, at thirty- 
three years of age, to be born again. 
To this woman I owe all I am — and to her 
the world owes its gratitude for any and all, 

50 



HITE HYACINTHS 

be it much or little, that I have given it. 
My religion is all in my wife's name. And 
I am not bankrupt, for all she has is mine, 
if I can use it, and in degree I have. 
And why I prize life, and desire to live, is 
that I may give the world more of the treas- 
ures of her heart and mind, realizing with 
perfect faith, that the supply coming from 
Infinity, can never be lessened nor decreased. 




51 



Time and Chance are often 
Masters of our Fate 

















^f J^^ 









Wilted Hyacinths 

FADED flower flung from 
the grated window of a 
prison cell, falls at the feet 
of a passer-by — a woman 
of the town. 

But why should I call her 
a woman ? She is a creature 
of the night. She belongs to all and to none, 
her home is a hovel and she lives in hell — a 
hell of her own preparing. 
Once she was courted, flattered, petted, 
pampered. She had her nightmare of glory 
when gold was showered upon her r silks 
rustled, perfumes filled the air, bouquets 
burdened her table, carriages with footmen 
stopped at her door jfi Mansions, servants, 
joyous suppers, laughter, diamonds, pearls 
— to do nothing and have everything, this 
was her ambition. 

She has drunk to its dregs the cup of noth- 
ingness. She has sought the potion that 

52 



W H'iTE H,l FHS 

gives f orgetf ulness ; for desertion, abandon- 
ment, death follows as an unerring sequence 
on all the gleam, glitter and glamour that 
have gone before. C[ And now she breathes 
only the sulphur fumes of Gehenna, and the 
scant silver that comes her way goes for the 
drug that brings oblivion. 
With bloodshot eyes, disheveled hair, and 
burning thirst, she hurries along — watched, 
hunted, hooted & She draws her tattered 
shawl closer about her benumbed frame as 
the cutting blasts of winter, rushing down 
alleys and from around sharp corners, hunt 
her out. 

The flower drops at her feet. 
She stops, looks around, no one is watching, 
she picks it up — yes, it is a spray of hyacinth. 
She looks up to see from whence it came, 
ind high up she thinks she sees a hand 
thrust out from a grated window. 
Some one is waving a hand to her — to her. 
•3* Who can it be — some one has thought 
of her — some one has sent her a flower! 
Q She brushes her hand across her eyes, as 

53 



"\A7 ~J T r T y t? TT "V A ( XT HP ' 

if to clear her misty vision and looks upj 
again ^&> 

This time she sees nothing, only the sullen , 
front of a great prison wall, jutting stone, 
grated windows, stone piled upon stone. , 
She thrusts the flower into her bosom, and 
forgetful of where she was going, turns; 
about and hastens to the den she calls home.. 
Some one has thrown a flower — not ther 
flowers such as patronizing women of the 
flower mission bring with tracts and words 
of advice — not that — a flower from the handi' 
of a man, a man in trouble, disgraced like 
herself, in bonds «^ He has thrown her a 
flower. Who is this man of whom she; 
thinks! Alas, she does not know. Years and I 
years, aye, centuries ago, when she wore^ 
pinafores and lived with her father, mother, . 
brothers and sisters in the country, she 
dreamed of this man, this man who would 
come to her and love her, and give her 
peace and freedom. 

It is the same dream come back — it is he. . 
He will deliver her from the body of this 

54 



death. He has flung her a flower. He is in 
trouble & What can she do to help him! 
<( She is a woman. She is not old. God 
sent her into life and she has a right to love, 
to tenderness, to motherhood and a home. 
No chill of doubt can put out the eternal 
'fire — she loves the ideal ! 
This is her misery, her disgrace and her 
crown. Illusions will not fade away, she has 
prayed and watched and longed for this — 
some one loves her £• He has flung her a 
flower &Z& 

^When he is released he will come to her 
and take her away, and they will leave this 
life of horror, and fly to the country and 
make themselves a nest as the birds do »fg&> 
Some one has flung her a flower. 
She belongs to him and him alone. She has 
loved him all these years. She has waited 
for him. God knows she has done wrong, 
but God knows, too, her heart is pure. She 
appeals to the higher law — a power greater 
than herself has been pulling her down to 
death — but God knows, God knows! For 

55 



was it not God who allowed her to bet; 
tempted beyond her strength ? 
Some one has flung her a flower. It has i 
awakened in her the ideal — she had thought 
it dead, dead and nailed down with the; 
coffin nails of her crimes. 
But no, there is light yet. She wishes to do 
penance, to condone, to succor, to sanctify 
herself to some one, to be kind, to be useful. 
The reflexes of the heart are as sure and 
certain as the march of the planets. The 
desires of the heart are fixed stars — clouds 
may obscure, but wait and you shall see the 
light & There is that in souls which never 
perishes *&&:> 
Some one has flung this woman a flower 
and she becomes happy with a horrible 
happiness. She sees a cottage, warmed and 
lighted; a kettle singing on the hearth; 
supper on the table for him who was even 
now coming to his home, their home, 
whistling from his work; she sees in the 
corner a cradle, and she begins crooning a 
lullaby to a babe that she has never pressed 

56 " 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

to her aching breast. C( Some one has flung 
her a flower. <( In the direst gloom, in the 
chill of abandonment, in the black of darkest 
pathways, in the dim, gray light of prison 
cells where the sun never enters, before stern 
judges, while policemen leer & men restrain 
not their evil tongues, beneath the maze of 
pitfalls, in nights of horror & blackest chaos 
there is a gleam of light Vi? It grows into a 
flame. What think you it can be ? 
It is love — it is the ideal. It exists even in 
hell. God never quite withdraws His Holy 
Spirit. Some one has flung her a flower. 




57 




Some Do Not Hear Opportunity 

When She Knocks Because They 
Are Knocking At The Time 

Opportunity 

|HERE is a gray-bearded 
maxim, honored on ac- 
count of its venerable age, 
which runs thus : "Oppor- 
tunity knocks once at each 
man's door." >4g&> John J. 
Ingalls once went a-sonnet- 
ing around this proverb, and some say he 
wrote the finest sonnet ever written by an 
American. I am inclined to think this is so; 
and if it is, it proves for us that truth is one 
thing and poetry another. 
The actual fact is that in this day oppor- 
tunity not only knocks at your door, but is 
playing an anvil chorus on every man's 
door, and lays for the owner around the 
corner with a club. The world is in sore 
need of men who can do things. Indeed, 
cases can easily be recalled by every one 
where opportunity actually smashed in the 

58 



WH lTE hyac nths 

door and collared her candidate and dragged 
him forth to success r&&> These cases are 
exceptional ; usually you have to go out and 
meet opportunity & But the only way you 
can get away from opportunity is to lie 
down and die. Opportunity does not trouble 
dead men, nor dead ones who flatter them- 
selves that they are alive. 
Let no man repine on account of lack of 
early advantages. Rare-ripes run away from 
advantages — they can not digest them. "If 
I had my say I would set all young folks at 
work and send the old ones to school," 
said Socrates, 420 B. C. 
What Socrates meant was that after you 
have battled a bit with actual life and begun 
to feel your need for education, you are, for 
the first time, ready to take advantage of 
your opportunities and learn. 
Education is a matter of desire. An educa- 
tion can not be imparted. It has to be won 
and you win by working. 
And this fact also holds : The best educated 
men are those who get their brain develop- 

59 



WHITE HYAC NTHS 

ment out of their daily work, or at the time 
they are doing the work. Quitting work in 
order to get an education was the idea of a 
monk who fled from the world because he 
thought it was bad; a fallacy we have par- 
tially outgrown. It takes work to get an 
education; it takes work to use it, and it 
takes work to keep it. 

The great blunder of the colleges is that 
they have lifted men out of life in order to 
educate them for life. All educated college 
men know this and acknowledge it. 
In his last annual report President Eliot of 
Harvard made a strong appeal to parents to 
get their children into the practical world 
of life as soon as possible, and not expect a 
college degree to insure success. 
Those who want to grow and evolve should 
not give too much time to the latest novel 
and daily paper. Don't spread yourself out 
thin. Concentrate on a few things — the very 
best educated men do not know everything. 
Cf Choose what you will be and then get at 
it. You'll win. 

60 



H TE • HYACINTHS 

If you quit, it simply shows you did not 
want an education ; you only thought you 
did — you are not willing to pay the price. 
Q The other day in the Michigan State 
Penitentiary at Jackson, I saw in a convict's 
cell three architect's designs tacked on the 
wall, and on a shelf were several books from 
a correspondence school. "Is it possible," 
I asked Dr. Pray, the prison doctor, "that 
a convict is taking a correspondence course 
in architecture ? " " Not only that," was the 
reply, "but a good many of our men are 
studying hard to better their mental condi- 
tion. This particular man has gotten beyond 
the amateur stage /? You see he has been 
working at his course for three years. He 
draws plans for us and is doing work for 
parties outside." Then we hunted up the 
man and found him in the marble shop. 
H He seemed pleased to know that I had 
noticed his work. "You see," he said, " I 
only work six hours a day for the state, and 
after that my time is my own, and I try to 
improve it ; there are no bowling alleys, pool 

61 



J T T C 



U V A 



xt nr'u 



rooms, nor saloons here — no place to go." 
And he smiled. I tried to, but could not — 
my eyes were filled with tears ^. A convict 
getting a practical education, and so many 
of us who think we are free, frittering away 
our time. 

If, in its anxiety to present itself, opportunity 
will break into jail, surely those outside can 
not complain of opportunity's lack of persis- 
tence in hunting out the ready and willing. 




62 



No Man Can Instruct Others In 
Anything >*^ We Can, However, 
Awaken Thought & Arouse Impulses 



r E 




A C H E R S 

JJT is a great thing to teach. 
$* I am never more com- 
plimented than when 
some one addresses me as 
" teacher. " To give your- 
self in a way that will in- 
spire others to think, to do, 
to become — what nobler ambition ! To be 
a good teacher demands a high degree of 
altruism, for one must be willing to sink 
self, to die — as it were — that others may 
live. There is something in it very much 
akin to motherhood — a brooding quality. 
Every true mother realizes at times that 
her children are only loaned to her — sent 
from God — and the attributes of her body 
and mind are being used by some Power 
for a purpose. The thought tends to refine 
the heart of its dross, obliterate pride and 
make her feel the sacredness of her office. 

63 



WHITE HYACINTH 

All good men everywhere recognize the 
holiness of motherhood — this miracle by 
which the race survives. 
There is a touch of pathos in the thought 
that while lovers live to make themselves 
necessary to each other, the mother is 
working to make herself unnecessary to her 
children. And the entire object of teaching 
is to enable the scholar to do without his 
teacher f& Graduation should take place at 
the vanishing point of the teacher. 
Yes, the efficient teacher has in him much 
of this mother-quality. Thoreau, you re- 
member, said that genius is essentially femi- 
nine ; if he had teachers in mind his remark 
was certainly true ,*? The men of much 
motive power are not the best teachers — 
the arbitrary and imperative type, that 
would bend all minds to match its own, 
may build bridges, tunnel mountains, dis- 
cover continents and capture cities, but it 
cannot teach. In the presence of such a 
towering personality freedom dies, spon- 
taneity droops, and thought slinks away into 

64 



WHTE HYAC PHS 

a corner. The brooding quality, the patience 
that endures, and the yearning of mother- 
hood, are all absent >£^> The man is a 
commander, not a teacher; and there yet 
remains a grave doubt whether the warrior 
and ruler have not used their influence 
more to make this world a place of the 
skull, than the abode of happiness and 
prosperity. The orders to kill all the first- 
born, and those over ten years of age, were 
not given by teachers. 

The teacher is one who makes two ideas 
grow where there was only one before. 
C[ Just here seems a good place to say that 
we live in a very stupid, old world, round 
like an orange and slightly flattened at the 
polls. The proof of this seemingly pessimis- 
tic remark, made by a hopeful and cheerful 
man, lies in the fact that we place small 
premium in either honor or money on the 
business of teaching. As in the olden times, 
barbers and scullions ranked with musicians, 
and the Master of the Hounds wore a big- 
ger medal than the Poet-Laureate, so do 

65 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

we pay our teachers the same as coachmen 
and coal-heavers, giving them a plentiful 
lack of everything but overwork. 
I will never be quite willing to admit that 
this country is enlightened, until we cease 
the inane and parsimonious policy of trying 
to drive all the really strong men and 
women out of the teaching profession by 
putting them on the pay-roll at one-half the 
rate, or less than that which the same brains 
and energy can command elsewhere. In the 
year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred Six, 
in a time of peace, we appropriated four 
hundred million dollars for war and war 
appliances, and this sum is just double the 
cost of the entire public school system in 
America. It is not the necessity of economy 
that dictates our actions in this matter of 
education — we simply are not enlightened. 
({ But this thing cannot always last — I look 
for the time when we shall set apart the 
best and noblest men and women of earth 
for teachers, and their compensation will 
be so adequate that they will be free to give 

66 



1/U T 



TE 



U V A P I M T H fi 



themselves for the benefit of the race, with- 
out apprehension of a yawning almshouse. 
A liberal policy will be for our own good, 
just as a matter of cold expediency; 
it will be enlightened self-interest. 




67 




One Can Bear Grief But It 
Takes Two To Be Glad 

Friendship 

HEN Charles Kingsley was 
asked for the secret of his 
exquisite sympathy and fine 
imagination, he paused a 
space, and then answered, 
"I had a friend." 
The desire for friendship 
is strong in every human heart. We crave 
the companionship of those who can under- 
stand. The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh 
for "home," and long for the presence of 
one who sympathizes with our aspirations, 
comprehends our hopes and is able to par- 
take of our joys. A thought is not our own 
until we impart it to another, and the con- 
fessional seems a crying need of every 
human soul &*&> The desire for sympathy 
dwells in every human heart. 
We reach the divine through some one, 
and by dividing our joy with this one we 
double it, and come in touch with the uni- 

68 



WHIT HYACINTHS 

versal. The sky is never so blue, the birds 
never sing so blithely, our acquaintances 
are never so gracious as when we are filled 
with love for some one. 
Being in harmony with one we are in har- 
mony with all f& The lover idealizes and 
clothes the beloved with virtues that only 
exist in his imagination. The beloved is 
consciously or unconsciously aware of this, 
and endeavors to fulfill the high ideal; and 
in the contemplation of the transcendent 
qualities that his mind has created, the lover 
is raised to heights otherwise impossible. 
Q Should the beloved pass from earth while 
this condition of exaltation exists, the con- 
ception is indelibly impressed upon the 
soul, just as the last earthly view is said to 
be photographed upon the retina of the 
dead. The highest earthly relationship is in 
its very essence fleeting, for men are fallible, 
and living in a world where material wants 
jostle, and time and change play their cease- 
less parts, gradual obliteration comes and 
disillusion enters ,*? But the memory of a 

69 



WHITE HYACINTHS^ 

sweet companionship once fully possessed, & 
snapped by fate at its supremest moment, 
can never die from out the heart. All other 
troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the 
individual is of too stern a fiber to be com- 
pletely crushed into the dust, time will 
come bearing healing, and the memory of 
that once ideal condition will chant in the 
heart a perpetual eucharist. 
And I hope the world has passed forever 
from the nightmare of pity for the dead: 
they have ceased from their labors and are 
at rest. 

But for the living, when death has entered 
and removed the best friend, fate has done 
her worst; the plummet has sounded the 
depths of grief, and thereafter nothing can 
inspire terror, At one fell stroke all petty 
annoyances and corroding cares are sunk 
into nothingness. The memory of a great 
love lives enshrined in undying amber. It 
affords a ballast 'gainst all the storms that 
blow, and although it lends an unutterable 
sadness, it imparts an unspeakable peace. 

70 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

Where there is this haunting memory of a 
great love lost, there is always forgiveness, 
charity and a sympathy that makes the man 
brother to all who suffer and endure. The 
individual himself is nothing : he has noth- 
ing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing 
to win, and this constant memory of the 
high and exalted friendship that was once 
his is a nourishing source of strength; it 
constantly purines the mind and inspires 
the heart to nobler living and diviner think- 
ing. The man is in communication with 
elemental conditions. 

To have known an ideal friendship, and 
had it fade from your grasp and flee as a 
shadow before it is touched with the sordid 
breath of selfishness, or sullied by misunder- 
standing, is the highest good. And the con- 
stant dwelling in sweet, sad recollection on 
the exalted virtues of the one that has gone, 
tends to crystallize these very virtues in the 
heart of him who meditates them fi The 
beauty with which love adores its object be- 
comes the possession of the one who loves. 

71 



HE 




It Is Love That Vitalizes T 
Intellect To The Creative Point 

The Kindergarten 

HE work of Frederich 
Froebel was put back to a 
degree that no man can 
compute, through the cold- 
ness, indifference and ac- 
tual opposition of men who 
J should have stood by him 
and upheld him. Cf The kindergarten is a 
complete reversal of barbaric educational 
schemes that did not spare the rod ^ We 
started in with the assumption that the child 
was born in sin, and "in iniquity did my 
mother conceive me," a slander on the 
children and a libel on motherhood. 
But so grounded were we in error that in 
our teaching of children, the elements of 
fear, suppression and punishment were ever 
present. We used the studies as a club and 
if a child did wrong we doubled his lessons. 
The plan of fining the delinquent forty 
lines of Virgil made him love Virgil, did it 

72 



W 1-TTTF H Y A P I NTH S 

not? If there were a better way of making 
books more distasteful than to use them as 
punishment I do not know it. 
The ecclesiastic English boarding school 
barbarity yet has its defenders >^&> At the 
tender age of six or seven we removed 
the child from his parents in the name of 
discipline. We sought to smother parental 
love and strangle affection, and we nearly 
succeeded. 

Froebel struck right at the root of error 
when he referred to the children as the 
"Little souls fresh from God.'' Froebel 
believed in the divinity of the child. Most 
Christians up to his time acted as if they 
believed that when Christ said, "Suffer 
little children to come unto me and forbid 
them not, for of such is the kingdom of 
heaven," he had a rattan hidden behind 
him. The practice of falling upon children 
with rods, straps, paddles, rulers and hair 
brushes has been very popular, not so much 
possibly to benefit the child as to relieve 
the pressure of pent-up emotion in the 

73 



WH TE HYACINTHS 

parent. Froebel's idea was that the child 
was a human flower, and the school should 
be a garden where souls could blossom in 
the sunshine of love. 

Froebel studied the inclinations of the child 
and sought to move in line with nature. 
He utilized the tendency to play; just as we 
in degree use the tides of the sea and the 
winds that blow to turn the wheels of trade. 
C£ To use these welling tides of our nature, 
Froebel said, "will lead us on to the Good, 
or if you prefer, to God." 
So in his teaching the playing of games had 
an important part. Play, song, and happy, 
useful effort — all working together for a 
common purpose! Socrates, four hundred 
and fifty years before Christ, taught that 
courtesy, kindness and self-possession were 
of more importance than facts grubbed from 
books — that is to say, it is qualities that 
make a man great and not knowledge. 
Aristotle followed up the same idea and in 
his education of Alexander, the child im- 
pulse to collect specimens was utilized, and 

74 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

Aristotle and his pupils formed the world's 
first herbarium and the first zoological gar- 
den. Q Froebel led his little band of pupils 
out into the woods and fields and they 
collected flowers, plants, birds, nests, fungi, 
and became acquainted with the beautiful 
world of nature just as a matter of curiosity, 
pleasure and play. 

To arbitrarily punish or embarrass a child 
Froebel considered a great sin, because to 
do so might be to implant in the child's 
mind the seeds of hate and revenge that 
would poison its entire life. 
Froebel saw this potent fact, that unless he 
could impress upon the parents the right- 
eousness of his methods, he could make 
little head. He said, "The teacher is the 
foster parent of the child for a few hours 
each day, and unless the home and school 
work together and are in harmony, my 
work will be in vain." 
So he invited the parents to his school and 
also had mothers' meetings where he sought 
to explain the reasonableness of his work. 

75 



The theological idea at the time was that 
the child should be disciplined, his spirit 
broken, and that the dunce cap of disgrace 
was a good thing. Froebel sought to make 
his work affirmative, not negative, but in 
spite of his gentle diplomatic ways he met 
with strong opposition and constant ridi- 
cule. The only pupils he could get were 
those too young to go to the regular schools, 
and these were turned over to him because 
he relieved the parents of their care. 
His intent and expectations were to carry 
his methods right up through all the grades, 
even into the university, and on through 
life. So actually, the kindergarten plan is a 
system of life, not merely a system of school 
teaching. 

Froebel knew his methods were right — he 
never faltered in his faith. But the constant 
unkind criticisms of rival teachers who 
clung to monastic methods, the stupidity of 
parents and the opposition of school boards 
wore him out, and he died in middle life. 
But with his last dying breath, in broken 

76 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

whisper he said to his nurse, "The world 
will yet accept my words — the idea of a 
child-garden will live ! I am dying but my 
thought will not perish — God cannot afford 
to allow it to wither." 
Can a person of intelligence now be found 
who dares say that Frederich Froebel was 
not a very great man — and does any one 
believe that Froebel did not care what 
people thought about him ? 
Is n't this true, that the greater the man, 
the more he desires to bless and benefit 
humanity, the more he actually does 
care what people think of him? 




77 




An Ounce Of Loyalty Is Worth 
A Pound Of Cleverness I 

Hundred-PointMen 

*HE other day I wrote to at 
banker-friend inquiring as 
to the responsibility of ai 
certain person,*? The ans- 
wer came back, thus: He 
is a Hundred-Point man in 
everything and anything he 
undertakes. C( I read the telegram and then 
pinned it up over my desk where I could 
see it. That night it sort of stuck in my 
memory. I dreamed of it. 
The next day I showed the message to a 
fellow I know pretty well, and said, "I'd 
rather have that said of me than to be called 
a great this or that." 

Oliver Wendell Holmes has left on record 
the statement that you could not throw a 
stone on Boston Common without carom- 
ing on three poets, two essayists, and a 
playwright. 
Hundred-Point men are not so plentiful. 

78 



H I T K HYACINTHS 

Q, A Hundred-Point man is one who is true 
to every trust; who keeps his word; who is 
loyal to the firm that employs him ; who 
does not listen for insults nor look for 
slights; who carries a civil tongue in his 
head; who is polite to strangers, without 
being "fresh;" who is considerate towards 
servants ; who is moderate in his eating and 
drinking; who is willing to learn; who is 
cautious and yet courageous. 
Hundred-Point men may vary much in 
ability, but this is always true — they are safe 
men to deal with, whether drivers of drays, 
motor men, clerks, cashiers, engineers or 
presidents of railroads. 
Paranoiacs are people who are suffering 
from fatty enlargement of the ego ^ They 
want the best seats in the synagogue, they 
demand bouquets, compliments, obeisance, 
and in order to see what the papers will say 
next morning, they sometimes obligingly 
commit suicide. 

The paranoiac is the antithesis of the Hun- 
dred-Point man. The paranoiac imagines 

79 



WHITE HYACINTHS) 

he is being wronged, that some one has itt 
in for him, and that the world is down oni 
him. He is given to that which is strange,, 
peculiar, uncertain, eccentric and erratic. 
<( The Hundred-Point man may not look: 
just like all other men, or dress like them, 
or talk like them, but what he does is true 
to his own nature. He is himself. 
He is more interested in doing his work 
than in what people will say about it. He 
does not consider the gallery. He acts his 
thought and thinks little of the act. 
I never knew a Hundred-Point man who 
was not one brought up from early youth 
to make himself useful, and to economize 
in the matter of time and money. 
Necessity is ballast. 

The paranoiac, almost without exception, is 
one who has been made exempt from work. 
He has been petted, waited upon, coddled, 
cared for, laughed at and chuckled to. 
The excellence of the old-fashioned big 
family was that no child got an undue 
amount of attention. The antique idea that 

80 






W H I T E FT Y A C T N T H S 

the child must work for his parents until 
the day he was twenty-one was a deal better 
for the youth than to let him get it into his 
head that his parents must work for him. 
Q, Nature intended that we should all be 
poor — that we should earn our bread every 
day before we eat it. 

When you find the Hundred-Point man 
you will find one who lives like a person in 
moderate circumstances, no matter what 
his finances are. Every man who thinks he 
has the world by the tail and is about to 
snap its demnition head off for the delec- 
tation of mankind, is unsafe, no matter how 
great his genius in the line of specialties. 
Q The Hundred-Point man looks after just 
one individual, and that is the man under 
his own hat; he is one who does not spend 
money until he earns it ; who pays his way ; 
who knows that nothing is ever given for 
nothing; who keeps his digits off other 
people's property. When he does not know 
what to say, why, he says nothing, and when 
he does not know what to do, does not do it. 

81 



W H HYACINTHS 

We should mark on moral qualities nott 
merely mental attainment or proficiency,, 
because in the race of life only moral qual- 
ities count. We should rate on judgment, 
application and intent & Men by habit and I 
nature who are untrue to a trust, are dan- 
gerous just in proportion as they are clever. 
I would like to see a university devoted to i 
turning out safe men instead of merely 
clever ones. 

How would it do for a college to give one 
degree, and one only, to those who are 
worthy, the degree of H. P. ? 
Would it not be worth striving for, to 
have a college president say of you, over his 
own signature: He is a Hundred-Point man 
in everything and anything that he undertakes I 




82 




If Truth be Mighty and God All- 
Powerful, His Children Need Not 
Fear Disaster Will Follow Freedom 

As To Science 

T was not so very long ago 
that the profession of teach- 
ing was entirely in the 
hands of theologians. All 
things secular and sacred, 
that were taught to young 
or old, were taught by 
priests. Priests decided what books should 
be printed and what not & The priest de- 
cided as to what should be taught, and how 
it should be taught, and beyond him there 
was no appeal. 

Instead of refuting natural science by natural 
science, theology sought to silence science 
by citing Scripture. 

Galileo, writing in 1610, complains because 
the theologians would not so much as look 
through his telescope, but sat back and de- 
clared him an " infidel" and an " atheist." 
Q Two popes, Pope Alexander the Seventh 

83 



W H T F ti v A ( N" T H <«! 

and Pope Urban the Eighth, placed inter- 
dicts upon Galileo and forbade his teaching 
that the earth revolved, under serious pen- 
alty. The works of Galileo and Copernicus 
were forbidden to all good Catholics, and 
were upon the Index for over two hundred 
and fifty years, or until the year 1836. For 
teaching the truths of natural science Bruno 
was burned alive, and his ashes scattered to 
the four winds. 

The policy of every formal religion has 
always been to allow the fullest play possible 
to individuality, and yet not risk the life of 
the institution. The institution being the 
important thing — the individual, secondary. 
This is the idea of society in general, as 
well r@^s» Individuals, however, threaten at 
times the life of the institution or system, 
by an excess of strength, and these power- 
ful individuals it has been thought necessary 
to subdue and suppress. So, when one reads 
history he notes the fact that in days gone 
by nations have killed, banished or dis- 
graced their men of genius. 

84 



WITtx T A I ^ ¥ \ V T X 7 A f » T "V T '"I "^ T T C\ 



This has always been done with the avowed 
purpose of protecting the state or the pre- 
vailing religious system. Socrates, Pericles, 
Jesus, Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Savonarola, 
Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno, Huss, Wycliff, 
are the types that society has suppressed. 
CJ That those who have done the destroying 
did not know what they were doing is 
probably very true. In one way they were 
surely self-deceived — they thought they were 
working for the good of the state or their 
religious system, when what they really 
feared was the curtailment of their own 
individual power. Men do the things they 
wish, and absolve their consciences at their 
convenience. And forever do they deceive 
themselves as to their motives. 
Said Archbishop Ireland, "The enemies of 
the Church have been inside the Church, 
not outside of it. The supreme blunders of 
churchmen have been in suppressing strong 
men — in thwarting individuality & All the 
good law and all the good order which the 
state or Church enjoys to-day may be traced 

85 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

back over some route to the words and 
deeds of men, who rebelled against the kind 
of law and the kind of order that they found 
administered by its * constituted guardians ; ' 
by men who dared to appeal from the 
* keepers of divine truth' to divine truth 
itself — from the * trustees of God' to God 
Himself." 

Those who manage religious systems have 
small faith in a Supreme Being or Universal 
Order. Luther, left alone, would have soon 
settled down into a country parson, and his 
protestantism would have diffused itself in 
the form of a healthful attenuation. All ex- 
tremes tend to cure themselves. Well has it 
been said that Luther retarded civilization 
a thousand years & It was the absurd and 
foolish rancor of priests and popes that by 
opposition lifted Luther into a world-power, 
and made possible a thousand warring, 
jarring, quibbling sects and systems, con- 
suming each other, and the time and sub- 
stance of mankind, in their vacuous and 
inept theological antics. 

86 



W P-TTTF u v A f NT T FT S 

Luther prolonged the life of theology by 
presenting it in a palatable capsule, just at a 
time when the intelligence of the world 
was making wry faces getting ready to spew 
it. G[ Pope Leo XIII. , the wisest man who 
ever sat in the papal chair, once wrote, 
" The real enemies of the Church have been 
those o'er zealous churchmen who have 
sought to stamp out error by violence, for- 
getful that man is little and our God is 
great, and that in His wisdom the Father 
of all has provided that evil left alone shall 
soon exhaust itself, and right, of itself, will 
surely prevail ^ Impatient defense of our 
holy religion springs from limitation and 
lack of faith. Against its avowed enemies 
the Church stands secure, but against those 
who are quick to draw the sword and strike 
off the ear of Malchus, we are often power- 
less. If the servants of the Church had ever 
taught by example, through love and pa- 
tience, even now the reign of our God 
would be universal, as the flowers of spring 
carpet the gentle hillside slopes." 

87 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

These gentle words of Pope Leo lose none 
of their quality, even when the obvious fact 
is pointed out that the man who struck off 
the ear of the high-priest's servant, was the 
very man who founded the Church. 
The reason there are now so few professors 
to teach theology, is on account of the 
scarcity of scholars who will pay for being 
taught. The demand always keeps pace with 
the supply where salaries and honors are 
involved. If there were a vast number of 
people who wanted to be taught alchemy, 
astrology and palmistry, there would not be 
wanting teachers to teach these things. 
When augury was in vogue and men fore- 
told the future by the flight of birds, in all 
first-class colleges there were endowed chairs 
held down by High-Test, Non-Explosive 
great men learned in the noble science of 
augury & & 

If there were now emoluments and honors 
for teaching alchemy, astrology, palmistry 
and augury, there would be pedagogic pre- 
paratory schools for all of these things, 

88 









WHITE H YA C I NTHS 

richly endowed by good men who did not 
understand them, but assumed that other 
people did. 

The science of theology is the science of 
episcopopagy. It starts with an assumption 
and ends in a fog «2* Nobody ever under- 
stood it, but vast numbers have pretended 
to, because they thought others did. Very 
slowly we have grown honest, and now the 
wise man and the good man accepts the 
doctrine of the unknowable. 
Gradually the consensus of intelligence has 
pushed theology off into the dust-bin of 
oblivion, with alchemy and astrology. 
Theology is not meant to be understood — 
it is to be believed. A theologian is an ink- 
fish you can never catch. And in stating 
this fact I fully appreciate that I am laying 
myself open to the charge of being a theo- 
logian myself. 

When a prominent member of congress, 
of slightly convivial turn, went to sleep on 
the floor of the House of Representatives, 
and suddenly awakening, convulsed the 

89 



assemblage by loudly demanding, " Where : 
am I at ? " he propounded an inquiry thatt 
is classic & With the very first glimmering; 
of intelligence, and as far back as history 
goes, man has always asked that question) 
and three others : 
Where am I ? 
Who am I ? 
What am I here for ? 
Where am I going ? 

A question implies an answer, and so, 
coeval with the questioner, we find a class 
of volunteers springing into being whose 
business it has been to answer. 
And as partial payment for answering these 
questions, the man who answered has ex- 
acted a living from the man who asked, 
also titles, gauds, jewels and obsequies. 
Further than this, the volunteer who ans- 
wered has declared himself exempt from 
all useful labor. This volunteer is our theo- 
logian & Walt Whitman has said: 
" I think I could turn and live with animals, 
they are so placid and self-contained. 

90 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

,1 stand and look at them long and long,&^> 

They do not sweat and whine about their 

condition. 

They do not lie awake in the dark and 

weep for their sins. 

They do not make me sick deciding their 

duty to God. 

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented 

with the mania of owning things. 

Not one kneels to another, or to his kind 

that lived thousands of years ago. 

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the 

whole earth." 

But we should note this: Whitman merely 

wanted to live with animals, he did not 

desire to become one. He was not willing 

to forfeit knowledge; and a part of that 

knowledge was, that man has some things 

yet to learn from the brute. 

Much of man's misery has come from his 

persistent questioning. 

The book of Genesis is certainly right, when 

it tells us that man's troubles come from 

his desire to know. The fruit of the tree of 

91 



WHITE HYACINTHS 



knowledge is bitter, and man's digestive 
apparatus has been ill-conditioned to assim- 
ilate it. But still we are grateful, and good' 
men never forget that it was woman who 
gave the fruit to man — men learn nothing 
alone. In the Garden of Eden, with every- 
thing supplied, man was an animal, but 
when he was turned out and had to work, 
strive, struggle and suffer, he began to grow 
into something better. 
The theologians of the Far East have told 
us that man's deliverance from the evils of 
life must come through the killing of de- 
sire; we reach Nirvana — rest — through 
nothingness & But within a decade it has 
been borne in upon a vast number of think- 
ing men of the world, that deliverance from 
discontent and sorrow was to be had, not 
through ceasing to ask questions, but by 
asking one more /? The question is this, 
"What can I do?" 

And having asked the question, we must 
set to work answering it ourselves. 
When man went to work, action removed 

92 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

the doubt that theory could not solve. 
<(The rushing winds purify the air; only 
running water is pure ; and the holy man, 
if there be such, is the one who loses him- 
self in persistent, useful effort. The saint is 
the man who keeps his word and is on time. 
By working for all, we secure the best re- 
sults for self, and when we truly work for 
self, we work for all f& The priestly class 
evolves naturally into being everywhere as 
man awakens and asks questions. Only the 
unknown is terrible, says Victor Hugo. We 
can cope with the known, and at the worst 
we can overcome the unknown by accept- 
ing it. Verestchagin, the great painter, who 
knew the psychology of war as few men 
have, and went down to his death glori- 
ously, as he should, on a sinking battleship, 
once said, "In modern warfare, when man 
does not see his enemy, the poetry of battle 
is gone, and man is rendered by the un- 
known into a quaking coward." 
Enveloped in the fog of ignorance every 
phenomena of nature causes man to quake 

93 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

and tremble — he wants to know ,*? Fear 
prompts him to ask, and greed for power, 
place and pelf, replies. 
To succeed beyond the average, is to realize 
a weakness in humanity and then bank on 
it. The priest who pacifies is as natural as 
the fear he seeks to assuage — as natural as 
man himself. 

So the first man is in bondage to his fear, and 
he exchanges this for bondage to a priest. 
First, he fears the unknown; second, he 
fears the priest who has power over the 
unknown. 

Soon the priest becomes a slave to the an- 
swers he has conjured forth. He grows to 
believe what he at first pretended to know. 
The punishment of every liar is that he 
eventually believes his lies & The mind of 
man becomes tinted and subdued to what 
he works in, like the dyer's hand. 
So we have the formula: 
Man in bondage to fear. 
Man in bondage to a priest. 
The priest in bondage to a creed. 

94 



Then the priest and his institution become 
an integral part and parcel of the state, 
mixed in all of its affairs. The success of 
the state seems to lie in holding belief intact 
and stilling all further questions of the 
people, transferring all doubts to this vol- 
unteer class that answers for a consideration. 
<J Naturally the man who does not accept 
the answers is regarded by the priest as the 
enemy of the state — that is, the enemy of 
mankind. 

To keep this questioner down has been the 
chief concern of every religion f& And the 
problem of progress has been to smuggle 
the newly discovered truth past Cerberus, 
the priest, by preparing a sop that was to 
him palatable /& From every branch of 
science, the priest has been routed, save 
sociology alone. Here he has stubbornly 
made his last stand, and is saving himself 
alive by slowly accepting the situation and 
transforming himself into the promoter of 
a social club. 
The priest is society's walking delegate. 



95 



W T-T'TTF HYACINTHS 

He is the self-appointed business agent of 
Divinity — and no contract between God 
and man, man and man, or man and 
woman, is valid unless ratified by him. All 
who do not belong to his union are scabs. 
Q The evolution of the race is mirrored in 
the evolution of the individual. Look back 
on your own career — your first dawn of 
thought began in an inquiry, "Who made 
all this — how did it all happen ? " 
And theology comes in with a glib expla- 
nation : the fairies, dryads, gnomes and gods 
made everything, and they can do with it 
all as they please. Later we concentrate all 
of these personalities in one god, with a 
devil in competition, and this for a time 
satisfies *£ & 

Later, the thought of an arbitrary being 
dealing out rewards and punishments, grows 
dim, for we see the regular workings of 
cause and effect. We begin to talk of energy, 
the divine essence, and the reign of law. 
We speak as Matthew Arnold did of a 
' ' Power, not ourselves, that makes for 

96 



\X7 TT T T* T? TT "V7 \ /""' T \T T* 



H S 



righteousness. ' ' But Emerson believed in a 
Power that was in himself, that made for 
righteousness. 

Metaphysics reaches its highest stage when 
it affirms, "All is One," "All is Mind/' 
just as theology reaches its highest concep- 
tion when it becomes monotheistic — having 
one God and curtailing the personality of 
the devil to a mere abstraction. 
But this does not long satisfy, for we begin 
to ask, " What is this One ? " or "What is 
Mind?" 

Then positivity comes in and says that the 
highest wisdom lies in knowing that we do 
not know anything, and never can, concern- 
ing a First Cause. All we find is phenom- 
ena, and behind phenomena, phenomena. 
s8S%\ The laws of nature do not account for 
the origin of the laws of nature. Spencer's 
famous chapter on the unknowable defines 
the limits of human knowledge. And it is 
worth noting that the one thing which gave 
most offense in Spencer's work was this 
doctrine of the unknowable. This, indeed, 

97 



\ir TT T T* T? TT V 



C I NT H £ 



forms but a small part of the work of this 
great man, and if it were all demolished 
there would still remain his doctrine of the 
known. 

The bitterness of theology toward science 
arises from the fact that as we find things 
out, we dispense with the arbitrary hand- 
made god, and his business agent, the priest. 
<J Men begin by explaining everything, and 
the explanations given are always for other 
people. Parents answer the child, not tell- 
ing him the actual truth, but giving him 
that which will satisfy — that which he can 
mentally digest. To say "the fairies brought 
it" may be all right until the child begins 
to ask who the fairies are, and wants to be 
shown one, and then we have to make the 
somewhat humiliating confession that there 
are no fairies. 

But now we perceive that this mild fabrica- 
tion in reference to Santa Claus and the 
fairies, is right and proper mental food for 
the child. His mind cannot grasp the truth 
that some things are unknowable; and he 

98 



WHITE H Y AC 1NTHS 

is not sufficiently skilled in the things of 
the world to become interested in them — he 
must have a resting place for his thought, 
and so the fairy tale comes in as an aid to 
the growing imagination f& Only this — we 
place no penalty in disbelief in fairies, nor 
do we make offers of reward to all who 
believe that fairies actually exist. Neither do 
we tell the child that people who believe in 
fairies are good, and that those who do not 
are wicked and perverse. 
The theological and metaphysical stages are 
necessary, but the sooner man can be grad- 
uated out of them the better. Hate, fear, 
revenge and doubt are all theological attri- 
butes, detrimental to man's best efforts ^^> 
Moral ideas were an afterthought, and 
really form no part of theology. All beauti- 
ful altruistic impulses thrive better when 
separated from theology. 
And the sum of the argument is, that all 
progress in mind, body and material things 
has come to man through the study of 
cause and effect. And just in degree as he 

99 



WHITE HYACINTHS' 

abandoned the study of theology as futile 
and absurd, and centered on helping him- 
self here and now, has he prospered. 
Man's only enemy is himself, and this is 
on account of his ignorance of this world, 
and his superstitious belief in another »&&» 
Our troubles, like diseases, all come from 
ignorance and weakness, and through our 
ignorance are we weak and unable to adjust 
ourselves to better conditions. The more 
we know of this world the better we think 
of it, and the better we are able to use it 
for our advancement. 

So far as we can judge, the unknown cause 
that rules the world by unchanging laws is 
a movement forward toward happiness, 
growth, justice, peace and right. Therefore, 
the scientist, who perceives that all is good 
when rightly received and rightly under- 
stood, is really the priest and holy man — 
the mediator and explainer of the myster- 
ious. As fast as we understand things they 
cease to be supernatural. The supernatural 
is the natural not yet understood. The theo- 

100 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

logical priest who believes in a God and a 
Devil is the real modern infidel. 
The man of faith is the one who discards 
all thought of "how it first happened,' ' 
and fixes his mind on the fact that he is 
here. The more he studies the conditions 
that surround him, the greater his faith in 
the truth that all is well. 
If men had turned their attention to hu- 
manity, discarding theology, using as much 
talent, time, money and effort in solving 
social problems, as they have in trying to 
wring from the skies the secrets of the un- 
knowable, this world would now be a veri- 
table paradise. It is theology that has barred 
the entrance to Eden, by diverting the at- 
tention of men from this world to another. 
<£ All religious denominations now dimly 
perceive the trend of the times, and are 
gradually omitting theology from their 
teachings and taking on ethics and sociology 
instead. We are evolving theology out and 
sociology in. Theology has ever been the 
foe of progress and the enemy of knowl- 

101 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

edge. It has professed to know all, having 
a revelation direct from the Creator Him- 
self, and has placed a penalty on all investi- 
gation and advancement. 
The age of enlightenment will not be 
here until every church has evolved into 
a schoolhouse, and every preacher 
is both a teacher and a pupil. 




102 



Nature Is On The Side Of Those 
Who Put Their Trust In Her 




VACATIONS 

flHERE are three good 
reasons why all employes 
should have vacations. One 
is so the employer can see 
how easily anybody and 
everybody's place can be 
filled. The next is so the 
employe can see, when he returns, how 
well he can be spared, since things go right 
along without him. The third is so the 
employe can show the employer, and the 
employer can understand that the employe 
is not manipulating the accounts or engi- 
neering deals for his own benefit. Many a 
defalcation could have been avoided had 
the trusted man been sent away for a few 
weeks every year, and an outsider put in 
his place. Beyond these, the vacation has 
little excuse. 

As a matter of recuperation the vacation 
does not recuperate, since as a rule, no man 

103 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

needs a vacation so much as the person who 
has just had one. 

The man who is so run down that he needs 
a vacation can never adjust or reform him- 
self in two weeks. What he really needs is 
to reform his life. 

To work during the year at so rapid a pace 
that in August one's vitality is exhausted, 
and a rest demanded is rank folly & What 
we all need is enough vacation every day so 
that we can face each morning with health 
sufficient to do our work in gladness. That 
is to say, we need enough of a play-spell 
every day to keep us in good physical con- 
dition. The man who is done up and fagged 
out has not found his work. And the man 
who lives during the year in anticipation of 
a vacation does not deserve one, for he has 
not ascertained that it is work, and not 
vacations, that makes life endurable. 
There be good people who travel by the 
gorge route so incessantly that their livers 
finally go on a strike, palates finally declare 
a lock-out, and then they laud Bernarr 

104 



; 

Mac Fadden, and proclaim fasting a virtue. 
All this until reasonable health returns, 
when they again buy commutation tickets 
via the whirlpool and play hockey with 
their in'ards. If you hustle so continually 
that your system demands a vacation, you 
have gotten where you cannot do good 
work. 

If you have reached a point where you can 
not do good work, you can not enjoy your 
vacation. If you absolutely need a vacation 
you are not in the mood to enjoy it, because 
it is thrust upon you by necessity, willy- 
nilly. Things forced upon us are never 
pleasant. The only man who can really en- 
joy an outing is the man who does not need 
it. And the man who keeps his system so 
strong and well balanced that he does not 
need a vacation is the one who will event- 
ually marry the proprietor's daughter and 
have his name on the sign <&• Before you 
manage a business, you would better learn 
how to manage your cosmos. 
I know, because I take vacations myself. 

105 



Nothing Fails Like Success 




InRe Success 

*S a rule, the man who can 
do all things equally well 
is a very mediocre individ- 
ual. Those who stand out 
before a groping world as 
beacon-lights were men of 
great faults and unequal 
performances. It is quite needless to add 
that they do not live on account of their 
faults or imperfections, but in spite of them. 
Q Henry David Thoreau's place in the 
common heart of humanity grows firmer 
and more secure as the seasons pass; and 
his life proves for us again the paradoxical 
fact, that the only men who really succeed 
are those who fail. 

Thoreau's obscurity, his poverty, his lack 
of public recognition in life, either as a 
writer or lecturer, his rejection as a lover, 
his failure in business, and his early death, 
form a combination of calamities that make 
him as immortal as a martyr J- Especially 

106 



W HlTl? hyac nths 



does an early death sanctify all and make 
the record complete, but the death of a 
naturalist while right at the height of his 
ability to see and enjoy — death from tuber- 
culosis of a man who lived most of the time 
in open air — these things array us on the 
side of the man ' gainst unkind fate, and 
cement our sympathy and love. 
Nature's care forever is for the species, and 
the individual is sacrificed without ruth that 
the race may live and progress. This dumb 
indifference of nature to the individual — 
this apparent contempt for the man — seems 
to prove that the individual is only a phe- 
nomenon. Man is merely a manifestation, 
a symptom, a symbol, and his quick passing 
proves that he isn't the thing. Nature does 
not care for him — she produces a million 
beings in order to get one who has thoughts 
— all are swept into the dustpan of oblivion 
but the one who thinks; he alone lives, 
embalmed in the memories of generations 
unborn. Q The Thoreau race is dead. In 
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord there 

107 



T T T 



INTH 



is a monument marking a row of mounds 
where a half-dozen Thoreaus rest & The 
inscriptions are all of one size, but the 
name of one Thoreau alone lives, and he 
lives because he had thoughts and expressed 
them for the people. 

One of the most insistent errors ever put 
out was that statement of Rousseau, para- 
phrased in part by Thomas Jefferson, that 
all men are born free and equal. No man 
was ever born free, and no two are equal, 
and would not remain so an hour, even if 
Jove, through caprice, should make them 
so. If any of the tribe of Thoreau get into 
Elysium, it will be by tagging close to the 
only man among them who glorified his 
Maker by using his reason. Nothing should 
be claimed as truth that can not be demon- 
strated, but as a hypothesis (borrowed from 
Henry Thoreau), I give you this: Man is 
only the tool or vehicle — Mind alone is 
immortal — Thought is 
THE THING. 



108 



An Act Is a Thought In Motion 




The New Thought 

(HERE are two kinds of 
thought: New Thought 
& Second-Hand Thought. 
New Thought is made up 
of thoughts you, yourself, 
think. The other kind is 
supplied to you by jobbers. 
The distinguishing feature of New Thought 
is its antiquity. Of necessity it is older than 
Second-Hand Thought. All genuine New 
Thought is true for the person who thinks 
it & It only turns sour and becomes error 
when not used, and when the owner forces 
another to accept it & It then becomes a 
Second-Hand revelation. All New Thought 
is revelation, and Second-Hand revelations 
are errors half-soled by stupidity and heeled 
by greed. 

Very often we are inspired to think by 
others, but in our hearts we have the New 
Thought and the person, the book, the 
incident, merely reminds us that it is already 

109 








ours. C, New Thought is always simple; 
Second-Hand Thought is abstruse, complex, 
patched, peculiar, costly, and is passed out 
to be accepted, not understood. That no 
one comprehends it is often regarded as a 
recommendation. 

For instance, "Thou shalt not make unto 
thyself any graven image,' ' is Second-Hand 
Thought. The first man who said it may 
have known what it meant, but we don't. 
However, that does not keep us from piously 
repeating it, and having our children mem- 
orize it. We model in clay or wax, and 
carve if we can, and give honors to those 
who do, and this is well. This command- 
ment is founded on the fallacy that graven 
images are gods, whatever that is <£ The 
command adds nothing to our happiness, 
nor does it shape our conduct, nor influence 
our habits. Everybody knows and admits 
its futility, yet we are unable to eliminate 
it from our theological system. It is strictly 
Second-Hand — worse, it is junk. 

Conversely, the admonition, "Be gentle 
no 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

and keep your voice low, " is New Thought, 
since all but savages know its truth, com- 
prehend its import, and appreciate its ex- 
cellence. 

Dealers in Second-Hand Thought always 
declare that theirs is the only genuine, and 
that all other is spurious and dangerous. 
Dealers in New Thought say, "Take this 
only as it appeals to you as your own — 
accept it all, or in part, or reject it all — and 
in any event, do not believe it merely be- 
cause I say so." 

New Thought is founded on the laws of 
your own nature, and its shibboleth is, 
"Know Thyself." 

Second-Hand Thought is founded on au- 
thority, and its war-cry is, "Pay and Obey." 
C, New Thought offers you no promise of 
paradise or eternal bliss if you accept it; 
nor does it threaten you with everlasting 
hell, if you don't. All it offers is unending 
work, constant effort, new difficulties, be- 
yond each success a new trial & Its only 

satisfactions are that you are allowing your 

in 





life to unfold itself according to the laws of 
its nature. And these laws are divine, there- 
fore you yourself are divine just as you 
allow the divine to possess your being. New 
Thought allows the currents of divinity to 
flow through you unobstructed. 
Second-Hand Thought affords no plan of 
elimination; it tends to congestion, inflam- 
mation, disease, and disintegration. 
New Thought holds all things lightly, 
gently, easily, even thought. It works for 
a healthy circulation, and tends to health, 
happiness and well-being now and here- 
after. It does not believe in violence, force, 
coercion or resentment, because all these 
things react on the doer. It has faith that 
all men, if not interfered with by other 
men, will eventually evolve New Thought, 
and do for themselves what is best and 
right, beautiful and true. 
Second-Hand Thought has always had first 
in its mind the welfare of the dealer. The 
rights of the consumer, beyond keeping 
him in subjection, were not considered. In- 

112 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

deed, its chief recommendation has been 
that "it is a good police system." 
New Thought considers only the user. To 
" Know Thyself " is all there is of it. 
When a creator of New Thought goes into 
the business of retailing his product, he often 
forgets to live it, and soon is transformed 
into a dealer in Second-Hand thought & 
That is the way all purveyors in Second- 
Hand revelation begin & In their anxiety 
to succeed, they call in the police. The 
blessing that is compulsory is not wholly 
good, and any system of morals which has 
to be forced on us is immoral. <J New 
Thought is free thought. Its pen- 
alty is responsibility. You have 
to live it, or lose it. Its 
reward is Freedom. 




113 




Satan Still Finds Mischief 
For Idle Ships To Do 

Work,Love& Power 

^NY one taking a trip up 
the Rhine cannot but be 
seriously impressed with the 
fact that the chief business 
of man, until yesterday, was 
war *^^> &&!> 
At every bend of the storied 
river is a castle. Each point of vantage is 
crowned with a redoubt, or the ruins of 
one, where men, armed with every known 
weapon of their time, once bade defiance 
to other men, and challenged their brothers. 
No man could travel without an armed 
guard — every man went laden with the 
instruments of death. 

The history of the race is a history of war 
and blood. The men who could kill most 
and quickest, were the men who owned 
the earth, and those who destroyed most 
were those to whom all honors were paid. 
Very gradually things have changed, until 

114 



m H I T E HYACINTHS 

over the fairest portion of the earth, life and 
property are now secure. Men who mind 
their own business have nothing to fear, and 
those are safest who carry no weapons. The 
honors are going to men who build up; 
who can create. Within proper limits we 
may express ourselves upon any subject of 
vital interest — we give men the right to their 
own opinions, and everywhere it is under- 
stood that a man has a perfect right to be 
wrong in his conclusions as well as right. 
Q No more striking proof of change is found 
than in the fact that recently we have found 
public opinion forcing arbitration upon men 
who "had nothing to arbitrate.' ' The men 
who owned those rock-ribbed fortresses and 
castles on the Rhine once had nothing to 
arbitrate. They took their position and held 
it — but not forever. 

It is the people who rule, for strong men 
are only strong as they are backed up by the 
people. When the people feel deeply and 
think sanely, and vibrate together, "the 
rulers" quickly fall into line. <{ And now it 

115 



W WTTy WYAf^TMTT-T** 

has come to pass that people object to being 
used as stones and sticks to fight the battle 
of the seeming strong /& Their quibbles, 
quarrels, feuds and selfish struggles for 
power are none of ours. Helen and Paris 
may elope for all of us — that is their affair — 
and all of Priam's loud calls of "To arms" 
fall upon the ears of men who have work 
to do at home. 

And here is a prophecy: In America con- 
scription will never again be attempted. It 
has gone and gone forever. Arbitrate your 
differences — you both are right, and both 
are wrong. Fighting may test which side is 
the strongest, but not which side is nearest 
right &> j* 

Calm deliberation will bring us near to 
truth, but heat, anger, strife and war only 
drive her far afield. 

That the world is fast getting rid of the 
thought of physical strife is very sure, but 
let us not plume ourselves too much about 
it — we have a long way to travel yet. The 
idea of danger is strong upon us; we have 

116 





not gotten rid of the thought of struggle 
and strife. 

" Society is in league against all of its 
members," wrote Emerson. And as once 
every clan was at enmity with every other 
clan, and every nation at war with every 
other nation, so yet does man in his heart 
distrust every other man. Suspicion, hate, 
jealousy, apprehension — all forms of fear — 
fill the hearts of men. The newspapers that 
have the largest circulation are those whose 
columns bulge with tales of disgrace, defeat 
and death. If joy comes to you the news 
will go unheralded, but should great grief, 
woe, disgrace and hopes dashed upon the 
rocks be your portion, the wires will flash 
the news from continent to continent, and 
flaring headlines will tell the tale to people 
who never before heard of you. 
And all this goes to prove that it is a satis- 
faction to a vast number of people to hear 
of the downfall of others — it is a gratification 
to them to know that disaster has caught 
some one in the toils. The newspapers print 

117 





what the people want, and thus does the 
savage still swing his club and flourish his 
spear & & 

Ride in any American city, on the morning 
cars, or upon any suburban train, and note 
the greedy grab for the daily papers, and 
observe how the savory morsels of scandal 
are rolled beneath the tongue. So long as 
men glory in the defeat of other men, it is a 
perversion of words to call this a Christian 
land & & 

But as clan once united with clan, and nation 
with nation for a mutual protection, so do 
a goodly number of people now recognize 
that men should unite with men — not only 
in deeds, but in thought — for a mutual 
benefit. 

To hold a thought of fear is to pollute the 
mind — prejudice poisons, jealousy is a thing 
to zealously avoid, and hate hurts worst the 
one who hates. 

And the argument is this: So long as the 
thought of rivalry is rife, and jealousy, fear, 
unrest and hate are in our minds, we are 

118 





still in the savage state. <J War robs men of 
their divine birthright, and turns the tide 
of being back to chaos. You have so much 
life — what will you do with it ? If you use it 
in pulling down other lives, you shall soon 
forfeit your own. And even though you do 
not do an overt destructive act, the thought 
of hate and fear reacts to your disadvantage, 
honeycombs the will and tends to destroy 
the tissues of your body. 
Every school, factory, store and institution 
is to a degree a hotbed of strife, jealousy 
and heart-burning & Plot and counterplot 
fill the air. There is disappointment, dis- 
content and apprehension everywhere. The 
employes or helpers unite in friendships, 
and all exclusive friendships breed factions, 
feuds and tend in the end to separate men. 
Beware of chums — they only pool their 
weaknesses f& He is strongest who stands 
alone. Be a friend to all — stand by all — 
speak well of all. If you lend a willing ear 
to any man's troubles, you make them 
your own, and you do not lessen his. 

119 



Tir TT T rr\ y-v rj Xf » A"-i T "VT ryA t_t q 

By listening to tales of trouble you absorb 
trouble — that is to say, you take discord 
into your being. And the more discord you 
have in your cosmos the weaker are you — 
you are that much nearer death and dis- 
solution. The more harmony you possess 
the stronger you are. The institution that 
succeeds in a masterly way is the one that 
has at its head a man of strong, stern and 
inflexible purpose S& The more this man 
keeps his eye on the central idea — the more 
he focuses on his work — and keeps fear and 
hesitation and distrust at bay, the more sure 
he is to win. 

The soil is bounteous, the mountains full 
of precious gifts, the opportunity to work is 
everywhere. Society needs men who can 
serve it — humanity wants help, the help of 
the strong, sensible, unselfish man. The 
age is crying for men — civilization wants 
men who can save it from dissolution ; and 
those who can benefit it most are those who 
are freest from prejudice, hate, revenge, 

whim and fear. 
120 



HY/ MTHS 

Two thousand years ago lived One who 
saw the absurdity of a man loving only His 
friends — He saw that this meant faction; 
lines of social cleavage, with ultimate dis- 
cord and so He painted the truth large, and 
declared we should love our enemies and 
do good to those who might despitefully 
use us. He was one with the erring, the 
weak, the insane, the poor, and so free was 
He from prejudice and fear that we have 
confounded Him with Deity, and confused 
Him with the maker of the worlds. He 
was one set apart, because He had no com- 
petition in matter of love. It is not necessary 
for us to leave our tasks and pattern our 
lives after His, but if we can imitate His 
divine patience and keep thoughts of dis- 
cord out of our lives, we, too, can work 
such wonders that men will indeed truth- 
fully say that we are the Sons of God. 
There isn't much rivalry here — be patient, 
generous, kind, even to foolish folk and 
absurd people. Do not extricate yourself — 

be one with all — be universal. So little com- 

121 



WHITE HYAC NTHSl 

petition is there in this line that any man 
in any walk of life, who puts jealousy, hate 
and fear behind him can make himself dis- 
tinguished. And all good things shall be his 
— they will flow to him. Power gravitates 
to the man who can use it — and love is the 
highest form of power that exists. If ever a 
man shall live who has infinite power, he 
will be found to be one who has infinite 
love. And the way to be patient, and gener- 
ous — to free yourself from discord — is not 
to take a grip on yourself and strive to be 
kind — not that. Just don't think much 
about it, but lose yourself in your work. 
G, Do not go out of your way to do good, 
but do good whenever it comes your way. 
Men who make a business of doing good 
to others are apt to hate others in the same 
occupation r&&» Simply be filled with the 
thought of good and it will radiate — you do 
not have to bother about it any more than 
you need trouble about your digestion. Do 
not be disturbed about saving your soul — it 

will be saved if you make it worth saving. 
122 



WHIT K H Y A C I N T H S 

Do your work. Think the good. And evil, 

which is a negative condition, shall be 

swallowed up by good. Think no evil; and 

if you think only good, you will think no 

evil. Life is a search for power. To have 

power you must have life, and life in 

abundance. And life in abundance 

comes only through great love. 




123 




Why May Not The Race Attain 
What One Man May Attain 

Emulation 

HEN an ambitious young 
man from the "provinces" 
signified to Robert Inger- 
soll his intention of coming 
to Peoria and earning an 
honest living, he was en- 
couraged by the Bishop of 
Agnosticism with the assurance that he 
would find no competition. 
Personally, speaking for my single self, I 
should say that no man is in so dangerous a 
position as he who has no competition in 
well doing. Competition is not only the life 
of trade but of everything else. There have 
been times when I have thought that I had 
no competition in truth-telling, and then 
to prevent complacency I entered into com- 
petition with myself and endeavored to 
outdo my record. 

The natural concentration of business con- 
cerns in one line, in one locality, suggests 

124 








the advantages that accrue from attrition 
and propinquity & Everybody is stirred to 
increased endeavor; everybody knows the 
scheme which will not work, for elimi- 
nation is a great factor in success; the 
knowledge that one has is the acquirement 
of all. Strong men must match themselves 
against strong men — good wrestlers will 
meet only good wrestlers. And so in a match 
of wit rivals out-classed go unnoticed, and 
there is always an effort to go the adversary 
one better. 

Our socialist comrades tell us that ''emu- 
lation" is the better word and that "com- 
petition" will have to go. The fact is that 
the thing itself will ever remain the same; 
what you call it matters little •a* We have, 
however, shifted the battle from the purely 
physical to the mental and psychic plane. 
But it is competition still, and the reason 
competition will remain is because it is 
beautiful, beneficent and right. It is the 
desire to excel. Lovers are always in compe- 
tition with each other to see who can love 

125 



W H I T F H Y \ N T H S 

most. Q The best results are obtained where 
competition is the most free and most severe 
— read history. The orator speaks and the 
man who rises to reply would better have 
something to say & If your studio is next 
door to that of a great painter you would 
better get you to your easel, and quickly, too. 
<X The alternating current gives power: 
only an obstructed current gives either heat 
or light; all good things require difficulty. 
The mutual admiration society is largely 
given up to criticism. 

Wit is progressive. Cheap jokes go with 
cheap people, but when you are with those 
of subtle insight, who make close mental 
distinctions, you should muzzle your mood, 
if perchance you be a bumpkin. 
Conversation with good people is progres- 
sive, and progressive inversely, usually, where 
only one sex is present <&• Excellent people 
feel the necessity of saying something better 
than has been said, otherwise silence is more 
becoming & He who launches a common- 
place where high thoughts prevail, is quickly 

126 



HJ n T H S 

labeled as one who is with the yesterdays 
that lighted fools a-down their way to dusty 
death v €^ 

Genius has always come in groups, because 
groups produce the friction that generates 
light. Competition with fools is not bad — 
fools teach the imbecility of repeating their 
performances. A man learns from this one, 
and that; he lops off absurdity, strengthens 
here and bolsters there, until in his soul 
there grows up an ideal, which he mater- 
ializes in stone or bronze, on canvas, by 
spoken word, or with the twenty odd little 
symbols of Cadmus. 

Greece had her group when the wit of 
Aristophanes sought to overtop the stately 
lines of iEschylus ; Praxiteles outdid Ictinus ; 
and wayside words uttered by Socrates were 
to outlast them all. 

Rome had her group when all the arts 
sought to rival the silver speech of Cicero, 
f& One art never flourishes alone — they go 
together, each man doing the thing he can 
do best. All the arts are really one and this 

127 



W H I T F H Y \ C I N T H S 

one art is simply Expression — the expression 
of Mind speaking through its highest in- 
strument, Man. 

Happy is the child born into a family where 

there is a competition of ideas, and the 

recurring themes are truth and love. This 

problem of education is not so much 

of a problem after all. Educated 

people have educated children. 

Recipe for educating your 

child: EDUCATE 

YOURSELF. 




128 




The Fact Is That Life Lies In 
Mutual Service — Any Other 
Course Is Merely Existence 

Patience Wins 

T is well to realize that it 
is the patient man who 
wins <£• To do your work 
and not be anxious about 
results, is the best way to 
go after and secure a big 
result. This does not mean 
that you are to sell yourself as a slave & If 
your present position does not give you an 
opportunity to grow, and you know of a 
better place, why go to the better place, by 
all means. The point I make is simply this: 
If you care to remain in a place, you can 
never better your position by striking for 
higher wages or favors of any kind. 
The employe who drives a sharp bargain 
and is fearful that he will not get all he 
earns, never will. There are men who are 
set on a hair trigger — always ready to make 
demands when there is a rush of work, and 

129 



WHITE HYA' MTHS 

who threaten to walk out if their demands 
are not acceded to. The demands may be 
acceded to, but this kind of help is always i 
marked on the time book for dismissal, 
when work gets scarce and business dull. 
Such men are out of employment about 
half the time, and the curious part of it is, 
they never know why. As a matter of pure 
worldly wisdom — just cold-blooded expe- 
diency — if I were an employe I would never 
mention wages. I would focus right on my 
work and do it. 

The man that endures is the man that wins. 
I would never harass my employer with 
inopportune propositions. I would give him 
peace, and I would lighten his burdens. 
Personally I would never be in evidence, 
unless it were positively necessary — my 
work would tell its own story. 
The cheerful worker who goes ahead and 
makes himself a necessity to the business — 
never adding to the burden of his superiors — 
will sooner or later get all that is his due, 
and more. He will not only get pay for 

130 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

his work, but he will get a bonus for his 
patience, and another for his good cheer ^* 
<J The man who makes a strike to have his 
wages raised from fifteen to eighteen dollars 
a week may get the increase, and then his 
wages will stay there. Had he kept quiet 
and just been intent on making himself a 
five-thousand-dollar-man, he might have 
gravitated straight to a five-thousand-dollar 
desk. I would not risk spoiling my chances 
for a large promotion by asking for a small 
one. And it is but a trite truism to say that 
no man ever received a large promotion 
because he demanded it — he got it because 
he could fill the position, and for no other 
reason. Ask the man who receives a ten- 
thousand-dollar-a-year salary how he man- 
aged to bring it about, and he will tell you 
that he just did his work as well as he could. 
Never did such a man go on a strike. The 
most successful strike is a defeat; and had 
this man been a striker by nature, sudden 
and quick to quarrel, jealous of his rights, 
things would have conspired to keep him 

131 



WHITE HYACIN T H S 

down and under. I do not care how clever 
he may be or how well educated, his salary 
would have been eighteen a week at the 
farthest, with a very tenuous hold upon 
his job. 

He that endureth unto the end shall b 
saved. 

At hotels the man who complains is the 
man against whom the servants are ever in 
league; and the man who complains most 
is the man who has the least at home. 
If you are defamed, let time vindicate you 
— silence is a thousand times better than 
explanation. Explanations do not explain. 
Let your life be its own excuse for being — 
cease all explanations and all apologies, and 
just live your life & By minding your own 
business, you give others an opportunity to 
mind theirs; and depend upon it, the great 
souls will appreciate you for this very thing. 
<J I am not sure that absolute, perfect 
justice comes to everybody in this world; 
but I do know that the best way to get 
justice is not to be too anxious about it. 

132 



• 



W H I T E HYACINTHS 

As love goes to those who do not lie in wait 
for it, so does the great reward gravitate to 
the patient man. 

It is but common to believe in him who 
believes in himself, but if you would 
do aught uncommon, believe yet 
in him who does not be- 
lieve in himself. 




133 



For Reward And Wage Give Us 
The Privilege of Going On 




Your Other Self 

ORK to please yourself and 
you develop and strengthen 
the artistic conscience &®> 
Cling to that and it shall 
be your mentor in times of 
doubt; you need no other. 
^ There are writers who 
would scorn to write a muddy line, and 
would hate themselves for a year and a day 
should they dilute their thought with the 
platitudes of the fear-ridden people & Be 
yourself and speak your mind to-day, though 
it contradict all you have said before. And 
above all, in art, work to please yourself — 
that other self that stands over and behind 
you looking over your shoulder, watching 
your every act, word and deed — knowing 
your every thought. 

Michael Angelo would not paint a picture 
on order. "I have a critic who is more ex- 
acting than you,'' said Meissonier, "it is 

134 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

my other self." *^^> Rosa Bonheur painted 
pictures just to please her other self, and 
never gave a thought to any one else, and 
having painted to please herself, she made 
her appeal to the great common heart of 
humanity — the tender, the noble, the re- 
ceptive, the earnest, the sympathetic, the 
lovable. That is why Rosa Bonheur stands 
first among women artists of all time : she 
worked to please her other self. That is the 
reason Rembrandt, who lived at the time 
Shakespeare lived, is to-day without a rival 
in portraiture. He had the courage to make 
an enemy. When at work he never thought 
of any one but his other self, and so he 
infused sdul into every canvas. The limpid 
eyes looked down into yours from the walls 
and tell of love, pity, earnestness and deep 
sincerity. Man, like JDeity, creates in his 
own image, and when he portrays some 
one else, he pictures himself, too — this pro- 
vided his work is art. If it is but an imita- 
tion of something seen somewhere, or done 
by some one else, or done to please a patron 

135 



•W.HIT1 A THS 

with money, no breath of life has been 
breathed into its nostrils, and it is nothing, 
save possibly dead perfection — no more. Is 
it easy to please your other self ? Try it for 
a day. Begin to-morrow morning and say, 
"This day I will live as becomes a man. I 
will be filled with good cheer and courage. 
I will do what is right ; I will work for the 
highest; I will put soul into every hand- 
grasp, every smile, every expression — into 
all my work. I will live to satisfy my other 
self.'* You think it is easy ? Try it for a day. 




136 




All Help Must Be Mutual. The 
Benefits Of Help Lie As Much In 
The Giving As In The Receiving 

Woman as a Chattel 

OMAN as a wage-earner, 
having property rights, has 
not been seriously consid- 
ered. She has been held as 
a chattel by man and that 
he leaves her something in 
his will is a generosity on 
his part «a* The laws in the United States 
generally concede that the use of a third of 
the joint property of a husband and wife is 
the wife's share, this third at the widow's 
death to revert to some heir the husband 
has named in his will. We must admit that 
marriage as it now exists is a business part- 
nership. Sentiment seems to forbid separate 
ownership of property for husband and 
wife, but sentiment does not provide that 
any just arrangement shall be made in the 
division of the property accumulated during 
the business partnership of this man and 

137 



W H ITF HYAC NTHS' 

woman, when the partnership in business 
ceases ^ J> 

If a just estimate of the earning power of 
the woman were made, and an honest 
record kept of her earnings, even if they 
were only that of housekeeper, mother, and 
conserver of property, and this sum and no 
more given to the woman, the lawyers 
would not be so busy rushing widows' 
claims before the courts, nor would the 
widows have the humiliation of being com- 
pelled to be subject to the law in getting 
what they have earned & Nor would she 
be led into the unseemliness of flaunting 
finery before frail, masculine men, bought 
by money she did not earn. 
The abolition of the law of inheritance 
would stop, in large degree, the ;hoarding 
of property by old men who clutch it to 
the last. They would and should distribute 
it during life, to those who have earned 
the right to it by showing they know how 
to use it, and so we will get a quicker and 
better distribution. 

138 








Property not distributed during a man's 
lifetime should be left to the state for public 
improvements, and the fact that we now 
have a tax of five per cent on inheritances, 
in some states, is the first entering wedge. 
Q The fact that the courts have now de- 
cided in various ways that a dead man's 
wish, when contrary to public weal, need 
not be regarded, is a finger that points that 
way. All that remains is for the public at 
large to recognize the truth that what a 
man does not earn does not benefit him, 
and the abolition of the laws of entail and 
inheritance will follow, and the only pro- 
test will come from those who want some- 
thing for nothing. We are all heirs to the 
knowledge of the past — on this there is no 
penalty, for we have to put forth effort to 
get knowledge, and have to work to use it. 
Equality of opportunity is the thing desired. 




139 




The Eye Reveals The Soul; 
The Mouth The Flesh; But 
The Voice Tells All 



A S O Y M BOL 

|T is well to cultivate a mild, 
gentle and sympathetic 
voice, and the one way to 
secure a mild, gentle and 
sympathetic voice is to be 
mild, gentle and sympa- 
thetic j* The voice is the 
index of the soul. Children do not pay much 
attention to your words — they judge of 
your intents by your voice. Your voice 
reassures. " My sheep know my voice." We 
judge each other more by voice than by 
language, for voice colors speech, and if 
your voice does not corroborate your words, 
doubt will follow. We are won or repelled 
by a voice. Your dog does not obey your 
words — he does, however, read your intents 
in your voice. 
The best way to cultivate the voice is not to 
think about it. Actions become regal only 

140 





when they are unconscious; and the voice 
that convinces, that holds us captive, that 
leads and lures us on, is used by its owner 
unconsciously ,£s&> Fix your mind on the 
thought, and the voice will follow. If you 
fear you will not be understood, you are 
losing the thought — it is slipping away from 
you — and you are thinking of the voice. 
Then your voice rises to a screech, subsides 
into a purr, or bellows like the vagrant 
winds. Anxiety and intent are shown, and 
your case is lost. If you fear you will not be 
understood, you probably will not. If the 
voice is allowed to come naturally, easily, 
and gently, it will take on every tint and 
emotion of the mind. 

So to get back to the place of beginning, 
my advice is this: The way to cultivate 
the voice is not to cultivate it. C{ The 
voice is the sounding board of the soul. 
God made it right. If your soul is filled 
with truth, your voice will vibrate with 
love, echo with sympathy, and fill your 
hearers with the desire to do, to be and to 

141 



become J> Your desire will be theirs. By 
their voices ye shall know them. 
Peace — be still ! Feel that, and then say it, 
and your voice shall be a word of com- 
mand that even the elements will obey. 




142 




Genius Is Only a Great Storage 
Battery Of Joyousness 

Genius a Mystery 

^\ NEVER saw a genius, and 
really do not know what a 
genius is, but surely there 
is plenty of precedent for 
speaking upon themes con- 
cerning which we know 
^j nothing ^ But my idea is 
that a genius is a man who has the faculty 
of doing certain excellent things in a mas- 
terly way &^> What other men work out 
with sweat and lamp-smoke this man does 
jauntily, joyously, and without seeming 
thought or effort. While others are talking 
about the thing, he does it. And he can 
never tell how or why. No dictionary can 
define this faculty of genius. No chemist 
can analyze it. 

It seems to be a flash of the divine spark 
that goes straight to the heart of things^^^ 
The man simply sees — that is all. And 
seeing he says, or writes, or paints, or acts. 

143 



W H 1TF HYACINTHS 

And depend upon this: direct and forceful 
doing is always the result of direct and vivid 
seeing. When you write luminously, with- 
out fog or mist, it is because there is no fog 
in your brain. Before you can make others 
see the picture you must first see it yourself. 
CJ All of those explanations about genius 
being "the ability to concentrate,' : and 
"the capacity for hard work," are clever 
but fallacious. You may have "the ability to 
concentrate" and "the capacity for hard 
work" and yet be mediocre. To be sure, 
the genius has the ability to concentrate, 
but he has something more. Some of us 
who have tuppance worth of talent can 
conserve it, and by judicious exercise and 
tutoring grow to a point where we do fairly 
good work. But where is the professor of 
literature who could have shown Shake- 
speare how to write " Hamlet," or the art 
school that could have instructed Michael 
Angelo how to fresco the Chapel of Sixtus, 
or the painter who could have mixed the 
colors for Turner's "Carthage," or the 

144 






WHITE HYACINTHS 

pedagog who could have instructed Edison 
in physics ? 

Yet we know nothing is done by chance. 
The miraculous is but the natural not yet 
understood. There are laws that regulate this 
supreme flash of the intellect. But all we 
know is that at long intervals we see its 
manifestation. Genius seems to be a sample 
of God's power, sent just to show us the 
possible. If one man out of a million may 
be supremely wise and efficient for a little 
while, why may he not in time be wise and 
efficient all the time ? And what one man 
may attain, why may not the race attain ? 
«&£* Emerson says, "A man is a god in 
ruins.' ■' This seems to imply that man is a 
failure, but the real fact is, Emerson, in this 
instance, has reversed the truth. A man is 
a god in the chrysalis. 
Now the genius is only a genius a part of 
the time. His moments of insight are tran- 
sient, and there may be days or weeks or 
months that are fallow. Then comes a quick 
gathering up of forces and a glory stands 

145 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

revealed for which the man had been 
groping for years. 

Corot, catching the sunlight on his palette 
and transferring it to canvas, was once so 
surprised and gladdened that he burst into 
song, and shouted for joy. And wishing to 
share this joy with another he looked about, 
and saw a peasant trudging along the road. 
Corot ran to him, embraced the astonished 
man, and seizing him by the arm, ran him 
across the meadow, and standing him be- 
fore the canvas, said, "Look at that! Look 
at that! I've got it at last^-look at that! " 
Cf The peasant didn't see it — he hadn't 
been looking for it — and the sunlight not 
being in his soul, he could not perceive it 
when it was mirrored in a picture. 
No, the peasant didn't see it, but he saw a 
"wild look" in Corot's eyes, and making 
haste to disengage himself, went home and 
told his wife that the painter-man was crazy. 
But Corot wasn't crazy. He was as sane to 
the last as Walt Whitman. 
The fact that one man sees things the 

146 



average man cannot, and knows things the 
average man does not, is no proof of insanity 
— hardly, brother! 

Corot was not crazy — he merely seemed 
crazy <£ & 

"This man hath a devil and is mad" — but 
he was not, that was only the opinion of 
certain good people. 

Men of supreme intellect do not go insane 
— it is lack of intellect that makes most of 
the trouble. And so the opposite of things 
always seems alike & When Shakespeare 
said, "Great genius is to madness near 
allied," he knew better *&& He was just 
passing out a popular fallacy to tickle the 
ears of the groundlings. 
But this little extension of mental power 
which we call genius, has ever gotten its 
owner into trouble *£ People cannot com- 
prehend it, and so they resent it. It is an 
insult — the man does not conform — he goes 
his own gait — he forgets the things that to 
others are vital: cards, curds and custards 
are nothing to him. He sees God in the 

147 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

burning bush and wants to ask Him a 
question & & 

Read the history of Beethoven, Michael 
Angelo, Leonardo, Shakespeare, Shelley, 
Byron, and you read a tale of family and 
domestic woe. 

The genius is a sore trial. Even Jesus was 
not exempt. His mother and brethren saw 
the extravagance of his acts, and wished to 
take him back in safety to their country 
home. And he, wearied with their impor- 
tunities, once for a moment lost his poise, 
and with a touch of impatience said to his 
mother, "Woman, what have I to do 
with thee! " 

Should a genius marry, let him follow the 
example of Goethe, who used to refer to 
his wife as "a convenient loaf of brown 
bread." Of course, the ideal would be to 
find a woman whose mind matches his own 
— who knows his worth and sympathizes 
with his ideals — and here our memory runs 
straight to the Brownings. 
But the chances are that the genius neither 

148 



WHITE HYACINTHS 

takes to himself the loaf of brown bread nor 
does he find his Elizabeth Barrett & And 
being a genius only at intervals, and the 
rest of the time an average man, he marries 
an average woman. 

Opinions, as usual, are divided as to whether 
the man is a genius or a fool. His kinsmen, 
who have known him from childhood, say 
he is a fool or a rogue — his conduct to them 
is always an affront j& The wife wishes to 
keep on good terms with her kinsmen and 
with society, and still she wishes to be loyal 
to her husband. She wishes to help him — 
to be his inspiration. 

The pace is too rapid — the woman grows 
breathless from running, and seeks to hold 
the man back. He tries to carry her, but 
finds he cannot. She wishes to minister to 
his " higher nature," but how can she when 
he seems to want nothing but to be let alone ! 
G^*. Her dissatisfaction is with herself, but 
triis she does not know. We lay blame 
elsewhere, and take all credit to ourselves. 
The great outside world of men and women 

149 



W H I T F HYAr^TMTH^i 

does not know the man excepting by his 
work. They see his picture, his statue, his 
book, or they listen to his oration, his song, 
or watch his performance from the parquet. 
He gives to the public his best, and the 
public breaks into applause. They demand 
his autograph, his photograph, they want 
the honor of shaking hands with him. His 
wife is pointed out as a mere appendage — 
nobody cares for her! 

Ah ! she will show them ! Straightway she 
sets out to be clever, too. She seeks to rival 
her liege and turn the current of admiration 
her way. She writes a book, or prepares a 
"paper," or sings in public, or " recites/' 
or displays her beauty in unique, peculiar 
and splendid gowns. 

But alas! letters still come demanding her 
husband's autograph, women stare at her 
coldly — it is all for him ! She is powerless 
against his genius, and so is he. 
Chills of fear and fevers of heat chase each 
other across the soul. The public does not 
know her husband ! It sees only the one 

150 



W U I T p HYAPIMTH^ 

side. She knows him — yes, I guess so. He 
deceives the public into the belief that he 
is some great one <& The words of unkind 
criticism and vituperation that she occa- 
sionally sees in the newspapers please her. 
The kinsmen are right — the man is a fakir, 
a fraud, a pretender — she knows — I guess 
so ! He no longer loves her — he goes to the 
woods alone. He does not tell her his plans. 
He declines to go to receptions or fetes — he 
writes or works half the night. 
She now demands attention as her due — 
asserts her rights, and boldly affronts the 
autograph fiends and bids the fools who 
come on pious pilgrimages, begone. 
She mistakes her husband's abstraction for 
stupidity, and seeks to rail him into a better 
way of life. She chides, rebukes, and he — 
awakening out of his lethargy — proves his 
common clay by railing back. 
Alas ! It confirms her suspicions — he is only 
clay and common clay at that. 
When a man ceases to pay court to his wife, 
other men are apt to. Her callers are smart 

151 



w 



TT T T"' T~> TT 17 A /"^ T X.T T* TT O 



in attire, quick in repartee, clever, attentive. 
They are like the suitors in the house of 
Ulysses — they overrun the place. 
But not eternally — for one fine day a tenor 
being too smart, laboring under the popular 
illusion that the genius is a fool, finds him- 
self kicked into the street, and a clarionet 
(through error) tossed after him. 
There are feminine tears, threats, protests 
in contralto — and now surely the man is 
no genius: he is simply a plain brute: a 
wife-beater — or nearly so. 
She is losing her husband — he is no longer 
wholly hers — he is slipping away, away. 
Their house is no longer a home — it is only 
an office or a studio ! She begins a system 
of espionage — letters are opened — duplicate 
keys play their part — servants are taken into 
her confidence «&$* And her punishment 
consists in finding her suspicions true r6^> 
We find that for which we seek. "That 
which I feared has come upon me." The 
thing we fear we bring to pass. 
And now the heart that should be filled 

152 



W H T E H Y A C N T H S 

with tenderness and gentle mother-love be- 
comes an abyss of cruelty ^nd revenge. She 
is willing, aye, anxious to disgrace, destroy 
and damn to lowest hell that which she 
once worshipped as divine. 
"The man is to blame," you say. And you 
are right g^%< His offense lies in his power, 
against which he is powerless. If he had 
not the power to express, to do, to influ- 
ence, to mold, to attract, he would never 
have given offense to this woman or any 
one else *£ He is to blame; but yet he is 
blameless because he is what he is. And she 
is blameless for the same reason. 
The artist is always selfish — he sacrifices 
everybody and everything in order to get the 
work done. Cellini casting his "Perseus" 
and throwing into the molten mass all of 
the family plate in order to get the statue 
complete, reveals the man. Palissy burning 
up the furniture in order to bring the 
furnace to the proper degree of heat, is the 
true type &&> And here is my advice to all 
women who are married to men who love 

153 



WHIT 1 1YACINTB 

their work better than they love their wives : 
£^^Do not nag, do not struggle, do not 
obstruct, do not fight, do not rival — just be 
yourself £• You are only lovable when you 
are yourself. Be a nobody, and sink your- 
self in your work, just as your husband sinks 
himself in his £• If your husband is great, 
he is great on account of his work — that is 
his virtue. He knows this, and his admira- 
tion is for the person who does his work. 
GJ And in useful work, at the last, there is no 
degree. It is all necessary, and the woman 
told of by Theodore Parker, who swept the 
room to the glory of God, deserves and 
shall have her crown of reward. 
Just here I feel like apologizing for having 
referred to a woman — any woman — as "a 
convenient loaf of brown bread." It was 
Goethe's expression, and not mine. I have 
too much respect for womanhood to speak 
lightly of women. The best that is in my 
soul has been absorbed from women. So I 
would rather put a new construction on 
Goethe's simile and say there is nothing 

154 



Tl \7 \ i^ I VT ''I' IT 



more nutritious, nothing more useful, and 
nothing so satisfying as brown bread. If you 
are a loaf of brown bread, thank God; but 
do not pretend you are a frosted cake, or a 
plum pudding. You will surely disappoint 
somebody, and there will be for you a day 
of reckoning. 

The clerk at the ribbon counter may be 
won by frosted cake with frills, sprinkled 
with red sanded sugar and caraway seed, 
but not so the man of power & He wants 
brown bread. 

And at the last the woman who can sink 
her oriental instincts, and be willing to be 
a nobody, simply do her work and sweep 
her room to the glory of God, completes 
the circle and reveals the great and splendid 
personality & By giving all, she shall win 
all. Simple honesty, simple integrity — no 
secrets, no conniving, no schemes! 
And from my limited experience in these 
matters I gather that the plain and unpre- 
tentious woman often has a splendid mind, 
and a deal of sturdy commonsense, and is 

155 



WHITE HYACIN T H 



very much more likely to appreciate he 
husband's genius, and make allowance for 
his limitations, than a wife who runs rival 
to her lord and has a furtive eye on fame 
for herself ^*Bea woman, a plain honest 
woman — the mother of men — and the man 
of power will go to you and lay his tired 
head in your lap, and with tears of gratitude, 
bless the Giver of all Good that you are his, 
that you minister to him, cheer him on his 
way, nourish and refresh him. 
Maeterlinck in writing of the bees asks, 
"Why do they thus renounce sleep, the 
delights of honey and love, and exquisite 
leisure enjoyed, for instance, by their 
winged brothers, the butterfly ? Two or 
three flowers suffice for their nourishment, 
yet in an hour they will visit two hundred 
in order to collect a treasure which they 
will never taste. Why all this toil and dis- 
tress, and whence this mighty assurance 
that all is well? Is it so certain then that 
the new generation whereunto you offer 
your lives will merit the sacrifice; will be 



= 



156 



made more beautiful, happier, will do 
something you have not done because you 
have thus toiled ? ' ' 

And the bees do not answer. Neither does 
the genius know why he thus works, and 
dares, and does, and offers himself and his 
all for a good that is yet unguessed. 
He does not know — he lives by faith. And 
of the Power that guides his footsteps and 
leads him on, he knows nothing more than 
does the bee &&± Continually he hears the 
Voice, "Arise and get thee hence, for this 
is not thy rest." And through snow and 
ice, through dust and heat, through glaring 
day and darkest night his answer to the 
Voice is ever instant and implicit obedience. 
The spirit of abnegation that gives all, and 
thereby wins all, is upon him: "Lord, here 
am I ! ' ' <f And this abnegation — this obedi- 
ence that neither stands, nor sits, nor hesi- 
tates, but goes, is the price of achievement. 




157 



Salvation Lies in These: Mutuality, 
Reciprocity, Co-operation — Service 



Hi? 



14 I V C: 



s We Know! 




*N courts of law the phrase 
"I believe" has no stand- 
ing. Never a witness gives 
testimony but that he is 
cautioned thus, "Tell us 
what you know, not what 
you believe." 
In theology, belief has always been regarded 
as more important than that which your 
senses say is so. 

Almost without exception " belief " is a 
legacy, an importation — something bor- 
rowed, an echo, often an echo of an echo. 
C[ The Creed of the Future will begin, " I 
know," not, "I believe." And this creed 
will not be forced upon people. It will carry 
with it no coercion, no blackmail, no 
promise of an eternal life of idleness and 
ease if you accept it, and no threat of hell 
if you don't. It will have no paid, profes- 
sional priesthood, claiming honors, rebates 

158 



V\ i A H S 

and exemptions, nor will it hold vast estates 
free from taxation. It will not organize itself 
into a system, marry itself to the state, and 
call on the police for support. It will be so 
reasonable, so in the line of self-preserva- 
tion, that no sane man or woman will 
reject it. And when we really begin to live 
it, we will cease to talk about it. 
As a suggestion and first rough draft, I sub- 
mit this— I KNOW: 
That I am here 

In a world where nothing is permanent 
but change, 

And that in degree I, myself, can change 
the form of things 
And influence a few people ; 
And that I am influenced by these and 
other people; 

That I am influenced by the example and 
by the work of men who are no longer 
alive & £• 

And that the work I now do will in degree 
influence people who may live after my life 
has changed into other forms; 

159 



That a certain attitude of mind and habit 

of action on my part will add to the peace, 

happiness and well being of other people, 

And that a different thought and action 

on my part will bring pain and discord to 

others, 

That if I would secure reasonable happiness 

for myself, I must give out good-will to 

others, 

That to better my own condition I must 

practice mutuality; 

That bodily health is necessary to continued 

and effective work; 

That I am largely ruled by habit, 

That habit is a form of exercise, 

That up to a certain point, exercise means 

increased strength or ease in effort; 

That all life is the expression of spirit, 

That my spirit influences my body, 

And my body influences my spirit, 

That the universe to me is very beautiful, 

And anything and everybody in it good 

and beautiful, 

When my body and my spirit are in har- 

160 



monious mood ; Q That my thoughts are 
hopeful and helpful unless I am filled with 
fear, 

And that to eliminate fear my life must be 
dedicated to useful work— work in which 
I forget myself; 

That fresh air in abundance and moderate, 
systematic exercise in the open are the part 
of wisdom; 

That I cannot afford, for my own sake, to 
be resentful nor quick to take offense, 
That happiness is a great power for good, 
And that happiness is not possible without 
moderation and equanimity; 
That time turns all discords into harmony 
if men will but be kind and patient, 
And that the reward which life holds out 
for work is not idleness nor rest, nor im- 
munity from work, but increased capacity, 
Greater Difficulties, More Work. 




161 



So here then endeth White Hyacinths, 
being a Book of the Heart, containing 
thoughts that have been voiced before, bu 
not so well J> Done into print by Tk 
Roycrofters at their Shop which is in Eas 
Aurora, Erie County, New York, mcmvij 






612 



